how surprised and startled he would be. If we could get _all_
the facts in any one incident, and get them colourlessly, and have the
judgment to sift and analyze accurately, what fascinating instances of the
power of prayer would be disclosed.

There is a double side to this story. The side of the man who was changed,
and the side of the woman who prayed. He is a New Englander, by birth and
breeding, now living in this western state: almost a giant physically,
keen mentally, a lawyer, and a natural leader. He had the conviction as a
boy that if he became a Christian he was to preach. But he grew up a
skeptic, read up and lectured on skeptical subjects. He was the
representative of a district of his western home state in congress; in his
fourth term or so I think at this time.

The experience I am telling came during that congress when the
Hayes-Tilden controversy was up, the intensest congress Washington has
known since the Civil War. It was not a time specially suited to
meditation about God in the halls of congress. And further he said to me
that somehow he knew all the other skeptics who were in the lower house
and they drifted together a good bit and strengthened each other by their
talk.

One day as he was in his seat in the lower house, in the midst of the
business of the hour, there came to him a conviction that God--the God in
whom he did not believe, whose existence he could keenly disprove--God was
right there above his head thinking about him, and displeased at the way
he was behaving towards Him. And he said to himself: "this is ridiculous,
absurd. I've been working too hard; confined too closely; my mind is
getting morbid. I'll go out, and get some fresh air, and shake myself."
And so he did. But the conviction only deepened and intensified. Day by
day it grew. And that went on for weeks, into the fourth month as I recall
his words. Then he planned to return home to attend to some business
matters, and to attend to some preliminaries for securing the nomination
for the governorship of his state. And as I understand he was in a fair
way to securing the nomination, so far as one can judge of such matters.
And his party is the dominant party in the state. A nomination for
governor by his party has usually been followed by election.

He reached his home and had hardly gotten there before he found that his
wife and two others had entered into a holy compact of prayer for his
conversion, and had been so prayin