office for him, and pushed him forward
before the men. He was supposed to be my closest friend. He came to
the parsonage one morning, to talk over casually the question of
salary.

"Now," he said, "you don't care how we raise your salary, do you?"

"Of course not."

"Well, the Society's hard up this year and can only raise $1,600; but
the church will raise the other $400, and I have one of them already
promised."

This seemed a most unusual proceeding, but I was unsuspecting. A few
months afterward this man, with tears in his eyes, said:

"Mr. Irvine, whatever happens you will be my friend--won't you?"

He was doing their work, and wincing under the load of it.

"Brother," I said, "when I know whether you are playing the role of
Judas or John, I will be better able to answer you."

At the end of the year it all came out. I was literally fined $400 for
attending that meeting.

As my term of service drew to a close, the workingmen who had joined
the church during my incumbency got together. They were in a majority.
A church meeting was called, and a motion passed to call a council of
the other churches. The purpose of the call was to advise the church
how to proceed to force its own Society to pay the pastor's salary. A
leading minister drew up the call. All ministers knew the record of
the church: only one minister in its history had left of his own
accord. The council met. It was composed of ministers and laymen of
other churches. Among the laymen was the president of the telephone
company. I had publicly criticized the company for disfiguring the
streets with ugly cross-bars that looked like gibbets. The
president's opposition to me was well known.

The council, under such influence, struck several technical snags, and
adjourned. The president of the council wrote me later that the
president of the telephone company had advised him not to recall the
council, and he had come to that decision.

Concerning the defrauding me of my salary, the best people in that
church to this day, when speaking of it, say: "Well, we didn't owe it
to him, _legally_." The Society spent the money in fitting up the
parsonage for my successor.

CHAPTER XVII

I JOIN A LABOUR UNION AND HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH STRIKES

After the public hearing on the water contract, several labour unions
elected me to honorary membership. The carriage makers' union had so
elected me, and a night was set for my initiation. It was a wild