For six months now we have been without a pastor.  We are hard to suit.  Mr. Wheaton was right.  Wheathedge is a peculiar place, and requires a very peculiar man.  But about six weeks ago there came along a very peculiar man.  He seemed to be just adapted to the place.  He was fresh from the seminary.  He had a wife but no children.  He was full of enthusiasm.  As a preacher he was free from conventionalism, bright, sparkling, brilliant; more brilliant than warm.  In private life he was social, genial, unministerial.  Old Aunt Sue did indeed complain that when he called there he did not offer to pray with her.  And good old Father Haines said he wished that there was less poetry and more Christ in his sermons.  But neither old Aunt Sue nor old Father Haines contribute much to the support of the Church, and their criticisms did nothing to abate the general enthusiasm.  Jim Wheaton said he was just the man, and promised to double his subscription, if necessary, to get him.  Deacon Goodsole was scarcely less enthusiastic.  I do not think there was a dissenting voice among the ladies; and the young folks were absolutely unanimous.

“If we can only get Mr. Uncannon,” said Jim Wheaton to me one morning, as we rode to the city in the cars together, “in three weeks we will drain the Methodist church dry of its young folks.”

Personally, I have no taste for foraging in other men’s fields.  But I knew that Jim Wheaton would not appreciate my sentiments, and so I kept silence.

Mr. Uncannon preached for us two Sabbaths.  He spent the intervening week in Wheathedge.  He visited with Deacon Goodsole most of the leading families.  He stopped at Mr. Wheaton’s.  If the people had been charmed with him in pulpit they were delighted with him in the parlor.  The second Sabbath I do not think there would have been a dissenting voice to the call.

There was only one difficulty.  It was considered very doubtful if we could get him.  That doubt I undertook to solve.

Monday he returned to the city.  I went down in the same train, and took occasion to fall into conversation with him.  I told him frankly the state of feeling.  I represented that it was very desirable that the matter should go no further unless there was a prospect that he would consider favorably a call if it were given him.  He replied with equal frankness.  He said that he was delighted with the place and with the people.  He wanted to come.  There was only one obstacle.  He understood that we paid our former pastor only $1,200 a year.  He could not undertake to live on that.

“In fact,” said he, “they want me very much at North Bizzy, in Connecticut.  They pay there $1,500 a year.  It is a manufacturing town.  I do not think either the society or the work would be as congenial as in Wheathedge.  I like the quiet of your rural parish.  I appreciate the advantages it would afford me for study.  But $300 is a good deal of money.  I do not want to be mercenary, Mr. Laicus, but I do not want to be pinched.”