During this year the Milwaukee District established a system of platform missionary meetings on the several charges.  To further the object, it was decided to appoint two or three ministers to attend each meeting, and by dividing the labor throughout the district, bring thereby all the preachers upon the platform.  On several of these occasions, I found myself associated with a brother who was beginning to attract considerable attention as a speaker.  We usually put him on the programme for the closing speech, that he might furnish the “rousements,” as Bishop Morris would say, for the collection.  And in this particular we were seldom disappointed.  The good brother was always ready for what might be called a flaming speech.  And though he always ran in much the same channel, his craft, to use a figure, was always full-rigged and under full sail.  But, to change the figure, and bring it more fully into harmony with the department of nature, from which the brother had evidently derived his name, I might say his pinions were always full fledged and in full tension for a lofty flight.  Unfortunately, however, he could never fold his wings in time to make a graceful descent when he desired to come down to the plane of ordinary mortals.  In the descent he would sometimes “swap ends” so many times, that it was a marvel that a broken neck was not the result.  But to his own mind these airy flights were always sublime, and especially so when he struck the quotation, which usually closed each missionary speech, that placed the herald of the Gospel on the highest pinnacle of time, and made him “look back over the vista of receding ages” and “forward over the hill-tops of coming time,” and “lift up his voice until it should echo from mountain top to mountain top, from valley to valley, from river to river, from ocean to ocean, from isle to isle, and from continent to continent, the whole earth around.”  Of course the collection always followed this speech, and if it proved to be pretty good, a few additional feathers went into the pinions for the next flight.

On one of these occasions our orator became greatly elated with his success, and rallied me upon the difference between the broad, velvety wing of the miller and the long, sharp pointed wing of his species.  The opportunity was too good to be lost.  I replied, “Well, my brother, I had a thought last night, when I saw you towering to such dizzy heights in your speech.”  “What was it?” he enquired, eagerly.  “Oh!” I replied, “I would hardly dare to tell you.”  “Yes, yes,” said he, “let us have it.”  I still hesitated, until the several brethren present joined him in his persistent request.  “Well,” I answered, “if you insist upon it I will state it.  When I saw you making your lofty flights, I thought if you could only have a few feathers plucked from the wings of your imagination and placed in the tail of your judgment, you would make a grand flyer.”  The next flight was made with greater caution.