00.
I owned a few lots on the old Coney Island road. My investments of any
surplus funds I had were in 5 per cent. mortgages. I had as much as
$80,000 invested in this way since I had begun these operations in
1882. Most of the mortgages were on private residences. I mention these
facts that there may be no jealous feeling against me among other
millionaires. Because of my reputation for wealth I was sometimes
included among New York's fashionable clergymen. I deny that I was ever
any such thing, and I almost believe such a thing never was, but I find,
in my scrapbook, a contemporaneous list of them.

Dr. Morgan Dix, of Trinity Church, with a salary of $15,000, heads the
list, Dr. Brown of St. Thomas' Church, received the same amount; so did
Dr. Huntington of Grace Church, and Dr. Greer of St. Bartholomew's. The
Bishop of the diocese received no more. Dr. Rainsford of St. George's
Church received $10,000, and like Dr. Greer, possessing a private
fortune, he turned his salary over to the church. The clergymen of the
Methodist Episcopal churches were not so rich. The Bishop of New York
received only $5,000. The pastor of St. Paul's, on Fourth Avenue,
received the same amount, so did the pastor of the Madison Avenue
Church.

The Presbyterian pulpits were filled with some of the ablest preachers
in New York. Dr. John Hall of the Fifth Avenue Church received the
salary of $30,000, Dr. Paxton $10,000, Dr. Parkhurst and Dr. C.C.
Thompson $8,000 respectively. Dr. Robert Collyer of the Park Avenue
Unitarian Church, received $10,000, and Dr. William M. Taylor of the
Broadway Tabernacle the same amount.

I was included among these "men of fashion," much to my surprise. This
fact, forced upon me by contemporary opinion, did not have anything to
do with what happened in the spring of 1891, though it was applied in
that way. My congregation were not told about it until it was too late
to interfere. This I thought wise because there might have been some
opposition to my course. I kept it a secret because it was not a matter
I could discuss with any dignity. Then, too, I realised that it was
going to affect the entire brotherhood of newspaper artists, especially
the cartoonists. I shuddered when I thought of the embarrassment this
act of mine would cause the country editor with only one Talmage woodcut
of many years in his art department. So I did it quietly, without
consultation.

In the spring of 1891 I shaved my whiskers.