The Press., 1897-04-29
Number 5.

desire to introduce stoves into the meet ing house, but his people thought they could glorify their Heavenly Father more by sitting through the interminable morn- ing and afternoon services without fires possibly the lurid pictures of one to come may have helped to mitigate their present distress, for dare say my honored an- cestor was the stiffest of Calvinists. However that may be, he carried his point at last, and the stoves were put in one Saturday afternoon. History records that at the next mornings service five excel lent mothers in Israel tainted on account of the heat, and were carried out of the congregation. This stroke was so nearly simultaneous among them that my grand father, who was something of a wag, raised his spectacles, and gazing with sympathetic face on the retreating pro- cession, mildly remarked, "I ought to have mentioned, brethren and sisters, that we did not get the stoves set up in time to light any fires. The church is at its usual temperature"
 We, who are called radicals in these days, comfort ourselves with the assur- ance that there is really nothing to faint about, and that ere long we shall be at tuned to the same keynote concerning current reforms, and the next generation will even forget that the questions that move us so deeply were ever bruited at all. The main point, after all, is that we should carry on our work in good spirit
 and here I am reminded again of that same dear old grandfather.
 There was difficulty between two of his deacons. Very likely one of them
 had declined to do his part in paying for the stoves aforesaid, and the other had called him "skinf1int." A church trial was ordered, with my grandfather as pre- siding officer. He opened the proceed ings by saying that the first thing to be done was "to look in the dictionary and see what the word 'skinfiint' meant '" At this, copy of Dr. Johnson's ponderous tome was brought in from the pastors study. and amid breathless silence he
 hunt, d for the word, but it did not appear on the pages of that great Photographer.
 Upon this my grandfather said as there
 was no definition given by authority they
 would be obliged to ask Deacon Blank
 what he meant when he used the word
 "skinfiint." At this, the offending dea-
 con Gnstigated thereto by recent arrange
 ment with the pastor) reached out his
 hand to his fellow-deacon, and said,
 "Well, parson, when said that word l
 meant that my brother deacon was a downright clever fellow" And so the dispute ended.
 We can congratulate ourselves that the
 opposition of good people is not so seri. ous as it often seems to be. It is like frost on the window-pane, and melts when warm breath blows upon it. re member at Rochester, N. Y., about twenty , years ago, was admitted, for a wonder to a Presbyterian pulpit. On that pulpi 7 was lovely boquet of roses, and beside them a note addressed to me, which reac
 as follows:
 Dear Friend: am opposed to womer !, who speak in public, and more particular
 ly hurt to think you were to enter tha' PA~OO3 ) which have belonged since childhood , But since you would come, and would speak, 1 thought it but kind to send yor these flowers, for I believe, that whatever . l may think, your intentions are good ) and by these wish to judge you
 , ANONYMOUS SISTER. ) The effects of the agitation of the rela 7 tion of alcohol to disease are finding thei r way into the most conservative ranks Such men as Sir Benjamin Ward Richard
 son, M. D., F. R. s., honorary physician ) to the Royal Literary Fund, the Newspa 3 per Press Fund, and the National Societ, l of Schoolmasters, and warm advocat 5 of the temperance cause, who died in Lon 3 don, November, 1896, and N. s. Davis, A , M., M. D., IL. D., president of Americal 8 M >dical association, dean of Rush Medi = cal college, who lives in Chicago, hav q paid the penalty of their courage anc l originality by being called "temperanc 3 cranks," but the scientific world is slowl l. and surely approaching their standpoint
 ''I define a fanatic as the first man wh sees a question. When more see it, h is called an enthusiast; when everybod d sees it, he is hero. ."-LGdy Henry Som