brutal outrages that had ever
been perpetrated in their midst. As for William, there was something
sublime in the way he permitted his mind to skip the facts and stir his
imagination when he preached a funeral. The curious part of it was, he
believed what he said, and generally by the time he had finished nearly
everyone else believed it. There were occasions, of course, when he
was disgracefully duped by the "surviving relatives." However, I pass
over a thousand little epitaphs of memory and come to our last years in
the itinerancy. And it is curious how life winds itself into a circle,
like the trail a lost man makes in the desert. After a few years as
pastor of village churches, William was sent back to the country
circuits. He was failing some, and, of course, younger and more
progressive men were needed in the villages--preachers who could keep
up with the committee-meeting times in modern church life. And I am
obliged to admit William was a poor church committeeman. Occasionally
he would go off to see an old sick woman or some barren fig-tree man
who was not even a member of the church, and forget all about an
important committee meeting on the brotherhood of man. This would give
offense to some of the people in the church, who, in turn, would
complain that he was not sufficiently interested in spreading the
gospel.

As I have said before, William was a good man, but he was neither
brilliant nor enterprising, as we understand these terms nowadays. He
never did get it into his head that salvation could be furnished a
dying world through a thorough organization of it into committees that
furnished not only the salvation, but also the goat districts which had
to receive this salvation as fast as it was offered. It was as simple
as commerce and as naive as a rich man's charity, but William couldn't
see it. Somehow, he was secretly opposed to it. He was for catching
every goat separately and feeding him on truth and tenderness till he
turned into a lamb. It was no use to argue that this required too much
time and would take an eternity to get the world ready for Heaven. He
refused to think of immortal souls as if they were bunches of heathen
cattle, or slum cattle, that must be got into the salvation market on
the hoof as soon as possible.

As he grew older, more set in his ways, he became a trifle contrary
about it, like a thorny old priest who has received private orders from
his God to go on seekin