respect for him. He was
the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or
intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he
should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of
his friend should not be frustrated: not merely with regard to the
fifty thousand--he offered to distribute that--but with regard to the
money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but
because of his great business ability. During the coal strike of
1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we
organized among the working people a coal company. The coal dealers
blocked our plans everywhere. We were shut out. Then the idea came to
us to charter a shipload and bring it from Glasgow. It was the keen
business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success. We needed
$15,000 to cable over. I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went
over them carefully and put up the money. Before we needed it,
however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in
Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs. This, of
course, was "interfering with business men's affairs," and the dealers
in coal were not slow to express themselves. I was a director of the
coal company for some time. The newspapers announced that I was going
into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor
ability in that direction. It was a great day in New Haven when our
ship entered the harbour and broke the siege. We sold coal for half
the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our
little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope
seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church,
left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured
away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical
pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising.
Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average
minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people
he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday
School and the other is the loose membership of other churches. The
theft is usually deliberate.

When my income was about forty dollars a month, subscribed by very
poor people, a pastor who had been building up his church at the
expense of his neighbours, wrote me that he was