hey were simply queer reversions to type--which indicates that at one
time, not so far back in the history of evolution, all men were mules.

The only way to manage them is to wait till they change their minds,
just as the driver must wait upon his stubborn donkey. For you can
never move one by reason or by threats. He would die and go to the
wrong place rather than give up his point. This is why you will see
some churches going to rack, antiquated and out of touch with the life
about them. Look inside and you will find some old mule steward
stalled in the amen corner, with his ears laid back at the pulpit or at
the other stewards.

I pass, without giving details, over several years; they were much like
these first ones. I soon learned, however, that life in the Methodist
Church was all uphill or downhill at a smart spiritual canter. In
these days it is nearly as easy to be a Methodist as it is to be an
Episcopalian.

One rarely sees now the hallelujah end of a human emotion in a
Methodist church. Recently, when an old-fashioned saint gave way and
scandalized the preacher by shouting in one of our fashionable city
churches, the stewards took her out, put her in an ambulance and sent
her to the hospital. And I am not saying that the dear old soul didn't
need a few drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia; but if every man who
shouts at a political rally were sent to the hospital for treatment the
real sick would be obliged to move out to give them room. As for me, I
contend that a little shouting is good for the soul; it is the human
hysteria of a very high form of happiness, more edifying to unhappy
sinners than the refrigerated manners of some modern saints.

Anyhow, I say there were no level grounds in Methodist experience in
William's and my early days in the itinerancy. No matter how young or
old or respectable they might be, those received into membership were
expected to show signs of awful conviction for sin, to repent
definitely--preferably in solemn abasement at the church altar--and to
experience a sky-blue conversion. There were no such things as we see
now--boys and girls simply graduating into church membership from the
Sunday-school senior or junior class. I am not saying it is wrong, you
understand; on the contrary, it would be much better for the church if
it did more spiritual hospital work among the kind of people who are
too bad even to go to Sunday-school. I think they all ought to be
ta