rch, with such sad hunger in
their faces, and then I looked through the open windows at the fair
fields spread like love promises of peace to us in this life, and it
seemed to me that possibly they had missed the cue somewhere and I
declined to make even a spiritual investigation of that country beyond
where the scenes of William's sermons were always laid. Very soon I
experienced, also, a woman's fear that eventually I should lose some
near and dear sense of my husband. There is, in fact, a
highly-developed capacity for heavenly infidelity to earthly ties in
most preachers, and the martyrdom of forsaking father and mother and
even his wife in the spirit appealed to his spiritual aspirations.
Many a woman has been deserted in this subtle manner by her minister
husband. But I kept the fear of it to myself, never encouraging this
attenuated form of piety in him by even opposing it. Meanwhile, I
began to observe with very genuine admiration his heroism in leading
forlorn hopes.

[Illustration: With Such Sad Hunger in Their Faces.]

This brings me to one of the most important duties of a circuit rider,
that of piloting the dying through the last shallows of the great sea.
There is where hope is forlornest and where William was bravest.
Pastors of fashionable churches rarely perform this office now. It
seems that an up-to-date church member regards dying so private as to
suggest the idea that some disgrace attaches to it. The minister
calls, indeed, speaks cheerfully and conventionally of the Hereafter as
of an opulent and famous city with a salubrious climate. He
congratulates the candidate for immediate residence upon his new
citizenship and takes his departure without the risk of disturbing his
temperature with a hymn or a prayer. The proper time for both of these
will be when he officiates later over the "remains."

I have sometimes wondered how a fashionable person feels who is obliged
even to die by the doctor's orders and according to convention,
repressing to the last those great emotions that have made us men
instead of clods.

Far away in the country death brings more distinction. There, men and
women have walked a lifetime in the fields, they have seen the sun rise
and set, the stars shine, the rain fall, the corn grow--all by the will
of God. And at the very last they are crowded by their great thoughts
of Him, excited by the encroaching fact of His tremendous nearness.
They need a priest, some one