He rented that as soon as he received his call to Brookville, after preaching a humiliating number of trial sermons in other places.  Wesley was of the lowly in mind, with no expectation of inheriting the earth, when he came to rest in the little village and began boarding at Mrs. Solomon Black’s.  But even then he did not know how bad the situation really was.  He had rented his house, and the rent kept him in decent clothes, but not enough books.  He had only a little shelf filled with the absolutely necessary volumes, most of them relics of his college course.  He did not know that there was small chance of even his meager salary being paid until June, and he had been ordained in February.  He had wondered why nobody said anything about his reimbursement.  He had refrained from mentioning it, to even his deacons.

Mrs. Solomon Black had revealed the state of affairs, that morning.  “You may as well know,” said she.  “There ain’t a cent to pay you, and I said when you came that if we couldn’t pay for gospel privileges we should all take to our closets and pray like Sam Hill, and no charge; but they wouldn’t listen to me, though I spoke right out in conference meeting and it’s seldom a woman does that, you know.  Folks in this place have been hanging onto the ragged edge of nothing so long they don’t seem to sense it.  They thought the money for your salary was going to be brought down from heaven by a dove or something, when all the time, those wicked flying things are going round on the other side of the earth, and there don’t seem as if there could be a dove left.  Well, now that the time’s come when you ought to be paid, if there’s any decency left in the place, they comes to me and says, ‘Oh, Mrs. Black, what shall we do?’ I said, ’Why didn’t you listen when I spoke out in meeting about our not being able to afford luxuries like gospel preaching?’ and they said they thought matters would have improved by this time.  Improved!  How, I’d like to know?  The whole world is sliding down hill faster and faster every minute, and folks in Brookville think matters are going to improve, when they are sliding right along with the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, and all the rest of the big bugs.  I can’t figure it out, but in some queer, outlandish way that war over there has made it so folks in Brookville can’t pay their minister’s salary.  They didn’t have much before, but such a one got a little for selling eggs and chickens that has had to eat them, and the street railway failed, and the chair factory, that was the only industry left here, failed, and folks that had a little to pay had to eat their payings.  And here you are, and it’s got to be the fair.  Seems queer the war in Europe should be the means of getting up a fair in Brookville, but I guess it’ll get up more’n that before they’re through fighting.”