The Pew:  “I think it is time for you to go away.  I am glad that conference is coming.  I shall see the bishop, and have you removed to some other part of the Lord’s vineyard.  You are too plain a Pulpit for such an elegant Pew.  Just look at your big hands and feet.  We want a spiritual guide whose fingers taper to a fine point, and one who could wear, if need be, a lady’s shoe.  Get out, with your great paws and clodhoppers!  We want in this church a Pulpit that will talk about heaven, and make no allusion to the other place.  I have a highly educated nose, and can stand the smell of garlic and assafoetida better than brimstone.  We want an oleaginous minister, commonly called oily.  We want him distinguished for his unctuosity.  We want an ecclesiastical scent-bag, or, as you might call him, a heavenly nosegay, perfect in every respect, his ordinary sneeze as good as a doxology.  If he cry during some emotional part of his discourse, let it not be an old-fashioned cry, with big hands or coat sleeve sopping up the tears, but let there be just two elegant tears, one from each eye, rolling down parallel into a pocket-handkerchief richly embroidered by the sewing society, and inscribed with the names of all the young ladies’ Bible class.  If he kneel before sermon, let it not be a coming down like a soul in want, but on one knee, so artistically done that the foot shall show the twelve-dollar patent leather shoe, while the aforesaid pocket-handkerchief is just peeping from the coat pocket, to see if the ladies who made it are all there—­the whole scene a religious tableau.  We want a Pulpit that will not get us into a tearing-down revival, where the people go shouting and twisting about, regardless of carpets and fine effects, but a revival that shall be born in a band-box, and wrapped in ruffles, and lie on a church rug, so still that nobody will know it is there.  If we could have such a Pulpit as that, all my fellow-Pews would join me, and we would give it a handsome support; yes, we would pay him; if we got just what we want, we could afford to give, in case he were thoroughly eloquent, Demosthenic and bewitching—­I am quite certain we could, although I should not want myself to be held responsible; yes, he should have eight hundred dollars a year, and that is seven hundred and sixty dollars more than Milton got for his ‘Paradise Lost,’ about which one of his learned contemporaries wrote:  ’The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other.’  Nothing spoils ministers like too big a salary.  Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked; if it had not been for the wax and the fat, he would not have kicked.  Sirloin steaks and mince pies are too rich for ministers.  Put these men down on catfish and flounders, as were the fishermen apostles.  Too much oats makes horses frisky, and a minister high-fed is sure to get his foot over the shaft.  If we want to keep our pulpits spiritual, we must keep them poor.  Blessed are the poor!”