nch, accepted a chair,
and sat for a moment wondering what he should say to the man whom he
was expected by the deacon to bring into his own church.

"Mr. Kimper," said the reverend gentleman, finally, "I trust you are
getting along satisfactorily in the very good way in which I am told
you have started."

"I can't say that I've any fault to find, sir," said the shoemaker,
"though I've no doubt that a man of your learnin' an' brains could see
a great deal wrong in me."

"Don't trouble yourself about that, my good fellow," said the
minister: "you will not be judged by my learning or brains or those of
any one else except yourself. I merely called to say that at any time
that you are puzzled about any matter of belief, or feel that you
should go further than you already have done, I would be very glad to
be of any service to you if I can. You are quite welcome to call upon
me at my home at almost any time, and of course you know where I can
always be found on Sundays."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the cobbler, "but somehow
when I go to thinkin' much about such things I don't feel so much like
askin' other people questions or about learnin' anythin' else as I do
about askin' if it isn't a most wonderful thing, after all, that I've
been able to change about as I have, an' that I haven't tumbled
backwards again into any of my old ways. You don't know what those ways
is, I s'pose, Dr. Guide, do you?"

"Well, no," said the minister, "I can't say that my personal experience
has taught me very much about them."

"Of course not, sir; that I might know. Of course I didn't mean
anything of that kind. But I sometimes wonder whether gentlemen like
you, that was born respectable an' always was decent, an' has had the
best of company all your lives, an' never had any bad habits, can know
what an awful hole some of us poor common fellows sometimes get down
into, an' don't seem to know how to get out of. I s'pose, sir, there
must have been lots of folks of that kind when Jesus was around on the
world alive: don't you think so?"

"No doubt, no doubt," said the minister, looking into his hat as if
with his eyes he was trying to make some notes for remarks on the
succeeding Sunday.

"You know, sir, that in what's written about Him they have a good deal
to say about the lots of attention that He gave to the poor. I s'pose,
if poor folks was then like they are now, most of them was that way
through some faults of the