as much a part of it as the red
oaks and the hills. They were not happy nor good, but they were
Scriptural. The men were in solemn bondage to Heaven. Religion was a
sort of life sentence they worked out with awful diligence. And the
women seemed "born again" just to fade and pray, not as these women of
the world fade, utterly, but like fair tea-roses plucked for an altar,
that wither soon. In Heaven you will not find them herded in the
Hosannah Chorus with the great, good women of history, like Jane Addams
and Frances E. Willard, but they will be there in some dim cove of the
celestial hills, sweetly sorrow-browed still, spinning love upon the
distaffs of Heaven, weaving yarn feathers for the younger angels.

I say, it is impossible to write of such a preacher and such people as
if they were characters in an electric religious fancy. Walking to and
from church here in this city I have almost wondered if they were ever
real. Thinking of them sets me to recalling stanzas from Watts's
hymns. I smell the thyme upon their hills. It seems as if my
adjectives were beginning to grow like flowers upon William's grave. I
can see the candles lit for evening services in Heaven, and him sitting
in the amen corner away from the flashing-winged, fashionable saints,
comparing notes with Moses and Elijah in his deep organ undertones.

The trouble with William was that he was the hero of another world in
this one, handcuffed by a Church Discipline. And the trouble with the
average New York preacher is that he is barely a foreigner in this
world, who is apologizing continually to his congregation for half-way
believing in his own other country. But now I have finished this poor
drawing of William's character. If I could have made it enough like
him it might have been fit for one of the family portraits of the
saints in Heaven. And I have often wondered why the monument builders
have never thought to raise a statue to the Methodist circuit rider.
The D. A. R.'s and the other daughters of this and that raise monuments
to men who were only brave, but no one has thought yet to erect a
statue to the memory of the Methodist circuit riders, who are not less
brave, but who have doubtless broken some Heaven records in simple
goodness and self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER XVIII

CONSCIENTIOUS SCRUPLES ABOUT THE CHURCH

I had thought that these letters were finished, but I am adding this
postscript to say that I leave New York to-mor