in the South, and the troubles of political jealousies local and national, there were cares enough for our church to consider.  Still, the summer of 1878 was almost through, and many predictions of disaster had failed.  We had been threatened with general riots.  It was predicted that on June 27 all the cars and railroad stations would be burned, because of a general strike order.  We were threatened with a fruit famine.  It was said that the Maryland and New Jersey peach crop was a failure.  I never saw or ate so many peaches any summer before.

Then there was the Patten investigation committee, determined to send Mr. Tilden down to Washington to drive the President out of the White House.  None of these things happened, yet it is interesting to recall this phase of American nerves in 1878.

There was one event that aroused my disgust, however, much more than the croakers had done—­Ben Butler was nominated for Governor of Massachusetts.  That was when politics touched bottom.  There was no lower depths of infamy for them to reach.  Ben Butler was the chief demagogue of the land.  The Republican party was to be congratulated that it got rid of him.  His election was a cross put upon the State of Massachusetts for something it had done we knew not of.  Fortunately there were men like Roscoe Conkling in politics to counterbalance other kinds.

Backed up by unscrupulous politicians, the equally irresponsible railroad promoter began his invasion of city streets with his noisy scheme.  I opposed him, but the problem of transportation then was not as it is now.  Just as the year 1879 had begun, a gigantic political promoting scheme for an elevated railroad in Brooklyn was attempted.  From Boston came the promoters with a proposition to build the road, without paying a cent of indemnity to property holders.  I suggested that an appeal be made to Brooklynites to subscribe to a company for the agricultural improvements of Boston Common.  It was a parallel absurdity.  Mayor Howell, of Brooklyn, courageously opposed an elevated road franchise, unless property holders were paid according to the damage to the property.  This was one of many inspired grafts of political Brooklyn, years ago.

A great event in the world was the announcement in November, 1878, that Professor Thomas Edison had applied for a patent for the discovery of the incandescent electric light.  He harnessed the flame of a thunderbolt to fit in a candlestick.  I hope he made millions of dollars out of it.  In direct contradiction to this progress in daily life there came, at the same time, from the Philadelphia clergy a protest against printing their sermons in the secular press.  It was an injustice to them, they declared, because the sermons were not always fully reported.  I did not share these opinions.  If a minister’s gospel is not fit for fifty thousand people, then it is not fit for the few hundred members of his congregation.  My own sermons were being published in the secular press then, as they had been when I was in Philadelphia.