im,
in the fields or on the road. I spoke in such soft tones and promised
so volubly every time he approached me that he got the impression
that I had no cottage--that I was a fraud and cheating his father. He
spread that impression. He began after a while to insult me, to make
fun of me. I debated with myself one afternoon whether when he again
repeated his insults I should thrash him or treat him as a joke. I
decided on the former. Meantime the check for the cottage came and
relieved the situation. Despite my inability to become a Yogi, I
believed in the New Thought. My wife and I used to "hold the thought,"
"make the mental picture," and "go into the silence." We did this
regularly.

I had an old counterfeit ten-dollar bill for a decoy. I shut my eyes
and imagined myself stuffing big bundles of them into the pigeon-holes
of my desk.

I got an incubator, filled it with Buff Orpington eggs and kept the
thermometer at 103 deg. F. My knees grew as hard as a goat's from watching
it. In the course of events, two chickens came. We had pictured the
yard literally covered with them. These poor things broke their legs
over the eggs. My wife was more optimistic than I was.

"Wait," she said, "these things are often several days late." So we
waited; waited ten days and then refilled the thing and began all over
again.

We lost an old hen that was so worthless that we never looked for her.
In the fullness of her time she returned with a brood of fourteen! She
had been in "the silence" to some purpose!

"Well, let's let the hens alone," my wife said with a sigh; "they know
this business better than we do." But we kept on monkeying with mental
images--it was great fun.

During our stay on that farm I did four times more pastoral work than
I had ever done in my life. I was the minister of the nondescript and
the destitute. I presided over funerals, weddings, baptisms, strikes,
protests, mass meetings. Nobody thought of paying anything. To those I
served I had a sort of halo, a wall of mystery; to me it was often the
halo of hunger--of the wolf and the wall--yes, a wall, truly, and very
high that separated me from my own.

An incident will show what my brethren thought of my service to the
poor. I was in the public library one day when the scribe of the
ministerial association to which I belonged accosted me:

"Hello, Irvine!"

"Hello, C----! Splendid weather we're having, isn't it?"

"Splendid," replied C----; and in t