minds, as I have hinted, to
lie low and to keep still and show them some.

And I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody in
the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would
soon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place.

The first time I saw B---- I had asked him to come over to arrange with
regard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The old
ones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, and
the pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes,
had become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engaged
B---- to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open the
trench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put the
pipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning he
appeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into my
study, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threw
himself out of his job!

There was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had gone
to the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter and
see if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with
the main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a new
connection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in at
once. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then,
slipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, he
bowed gravely and was gone.

B---- knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look)
that I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that
blessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it or
who would know what to do with it if he did.

* * * * *

Sometimes I sit and think of B---- in church, or at least I used to,
especially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure to
think of paying one of B----'s bills--even if it was sometimes a
postponed one. You always knew, with B----, that he had made that bill
out to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself.

Not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon.

I do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; and
while, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in the
old stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I do
acknowledge, been bad