The record-union., 1894-11-15
DEACON COOLIES LITTLE STORY
How the Church Debt Was Lifted by
a MvsrafInr1s


Mysterious stranger.
"You know" said Deacon Gozzle, ''I'd
often heard of men going away from their
native village to the city and getting rich
and finally coming back 10 settle and
! building fine house, or building a house
and coming there to spend their summers;
or giving the town a library, or building
new church or schoolhouse, or doing
something good that showed that their
heart was i'll the old town. But the
queerest thing Of that sort [ ever heard of
happened i'll my town, and it happened
In the church that belong TO.
There came TO our church one Sunday
stranger, just an ordinary-looking
stranger in good Sunday clothes, and we
put him as we always did strangers in as
good seat as we had, which happened to
be IN this case the best seat in the mid
ole aisle, a fact for which we were after
ward very grateful. We didn't observe
anything very remarkable about this
man; ne listened to the sermon and stood
up with the rest when they sung, and
when the plate was passed he dropped in
Dill. That was kind o. remarkable, but
not so dreadful remarkable. for folks
sometimes did put bills in the plate in
our church. But when we came to
straighten out the collection and count it,
which we always did after meeting, we
did encounter the most remarkable thing
that had ever happened in our church:
the bill that the stranger had put III folded
up so small and quiet was thousand
dollar bill.
well. if there'd been All earthquake in
the town there couldn't any moro people
have heard OF 1t, nor any quicker, and
everybody wondered who he was. He
was stopping at the hotel, and keeping
very quiet, and next day he went away,
and then everybody wondered if he'd
ever come back. He did the next Sun
day, and he went to church, and he
| dropped another bill in the plate when it
| got 10 nm, folded mp small, Just like the
other. 1t was another thousand.
Then there was excitement. The man
went away the next morning just the
same, but he came back the next SUNDAY
and put in another thousand, and he kept
coming and going i'll that way until he
| put in nine $1,000 bills, with the excite
ment growing all the time.
! Then there was a mortgage on the
church of 0,000. BY this time, OF course,
everybody had got it into their heads that
! the stranger was paying off this mort
! gage, and everybody was very glad of it.
1t wasn't poor town, by any means, but
1t was farming town, where cash wasn't
| oyer-plentiful, and $4,000 seemed like a
great deal OF money-Which it was-and
this man was paying it, or every body
| thought he was, and when it came to the
| next Sunday, the tenth Sunday, which
every body sort of felt was going to be the
last one, and the one that would tell who
! the stranger was, you couldn't get into
| the church. But we managed TO make
room for him when he came, and he did
come, and we gave him the identical pew
| he sat in the first Sunday. Well, when
the plate came around ne put in another.
He'd done it-he'd paid the debt OF the
! church.
After that he didn't keep himself
| quite so quiet. He was around the village
| more, and first one and then another
recognized him, and then everybody that
was old enough wondered that every body
| hadn't recognized him from the Begin
ning. He was born and raised there, and
! had gone away when he was a young
! man of twenty TO make his fortune, and
| he'd made it, not in cities, but out on the
plains raising cattle, and nobody had met
! him or heard of him. But he didn't look
! like a cowboy when he came back; he
| looked just like anybody, and acted so.
"He did say aiterward that paying the
| church debt was more fun than he'd ever
struck in his life. He was a little Curl
Gus in that way in his way of speaking;
but his heart, Pm sure, was as sound as a
dollar."-N Y. Sun.