Part 2 (2/2)

No 2

”In the year 1801 I, Enoch B----, was born Without any shi+rt on”

CHAPTER V

CAREER OF A DOMINIE-PEDAGOGUE

Dear old fathers and h the rubbish of our imperfections, and see in us the divine ideal of our natures, love in us not perhaps the els we may be in the evolution of the ”sweet by and by,”

like the ustine, who, even while he ild and reckless, beheld hiht hand of God

They see through us as Michel Angelo saw through the block of el was imprisoned within it They are soul artists They can never acknowledge our faults, only our divine possibilities; so, when I left the acade and with tears, entreated me to become a minister I had not the heart to disappoint the that suy croatched froasped for breath at the cold backward plunge, I ih strangled I survived the ordeal, and that afternoon preached in the church to nearly the entire population of the town on the ”Final state of the impenitent dead”

Oh, the terrors of this my first sermon, horrors to preacher as well as to ”preachees” As I sat in the pulpit beside our pastor, listening to the treazing at the sea of upturned faces, they see”Oh fool and hypocrite”

Allwith ill-concealed merriment

Every pore poured forth perspiration, and my hair seemed to stand on end like quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine I thought of the experience of the first serical student which I had recently read in a comic paper, and I treue, like many of his cloth, was possessed of the insane iifted with the subli invited to preach on his return to the old ho text ”and the du theme he wrote a sensational serht electrify his audience with eye power as well as by verbal flow of soul The awful day arrived, but when the young apostle arose to preach, stage fright banished fro text

”My friends,” said he, ”we are informed by the holy book that this du his hair in desperation, he repeated the text several tiusted pastor, who jumped to his feet and shouted:

”Well, friends, as the du to say, let us pray”

This awful exah converted me into another specimen of this historic animal, but at last the pent up cave of the winds was opened, and a gust of sound ca ears of my hearers that they dazedly mistook it for eloquence

I painted to the brimstone tossed, forever, oh forever lost” I did not intend to be a hypocrite; but drifted with the revival tide

I discoursed often that summer to audiences that crowded the church to the doors I was but fifteen years of age, and was called: ”The wonderful boy preacher”

One Sunday the village crank ca a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushi+ng it to a pie, then leaped fro a blasphehter, and thus broke up theof the contribution-box, ” on all possible occasions

I soon found that however anxious people were to save their souls, they were unwilling to part with their ”filthy lucre” to buy through tickets to the celestial city, consequently, that winter being impecunious, I was constrained to accept the offer of my cousin, the ”prudential coton, NH, for the generous stipend of 14 perfro there I was ushered into the i presence of the Free-will Baptist h I had plenty of Greek and Latin, I oefully uninstructed in the rudiue, and was saved only by the fact that est contributor to the dominie's salary

The reverend superintendent had prepared an appalling array of ”posers” in accordance with the laws of the state, but ent request, assured hireatest institutions in the world, that I was a clergyman of his own denouished a scholar, that dinner was ready, and the hungry dominie was seduced to the table where he partook of so ot his official duty, and gave me the required certificate: thus I was saved from utter destruction

In this isolated country town the co around, was the great social event of the year to each faton, so called fro was invariably killed in his honor, and he was regaled with fried pork, roast pig, broiled hog, sausages, and doughnuts reeking with swine fat _ad nauseaalore

The teacher was thus et even with his carnivorous tor

At the opening of the school, this long and lank fifteen year old pedagogue faced sixty pupils from the ”a, b, c, tot” to the braenty-one-year-older, spoiling for a fight When I assayed to take a seat, the half-sawed-off hind legs of the chair gave way, and I fell heels in air upon the dirty floor amid the yells and cat-calls of this tuleader came forward to throw me into the snow bank, where my predecessor was nearly smothered with his head under the snow and his feet uplifted to heaven