ng, self-satisfied "firsts" in
this world, who shall be last and least in the world to come. Those
least inclined to tattle about their neighbors, I found, were poor,
pathetic sinners with damaged reputations, who could not afford to talk
about others. They belonged humbly to the church, but never figured
loudly in it. And if God is God, as I do firmly believe in spite of
all I have heard to the contrary, there will be something "doing" in
Heaven when these saint-pecked sinners are all herded in. They will
wear the holy seal of His tender forgiveness through all eternity and
get most of the high offices in Paradise, just as a matter of simple
justice.

What I have suffered morally from them cannot be put into words.
Within a week of our arrival on a new work one of them would be sure to
call. There was Sister Weekly, for example, on the Gourdville Circuit,
and the parsonage here was in the little village of Gourdville.
William was out making his first pastoral visits when there came a
gentle knock at the door. I untied my kitchen apron, smoothed my hair,
sighed--for I knew from past experience it would be the church's arch
gossip--and opened the door. A round old lady tied up in a sanctified
black widow's bonnet stood on the step.

"I am Mrs. Weekly," she explained, "and I reckon you are Sister
Thompson, the new preacher's wife. Both my sons are stewards. And I
thought I'd come over and get acquainted and give you a few p'inters.
It's so hard for a stranger in a strange place to know which is which."

"I am glad to see you. Won't you come in?" I said pleasantly.

She settled herself in the rocker before the fire in our "front room,"
looked down at the rug and exclaimed:

"My! ain't this rug greasy! Our last pastor's wife was a dreadful
careless housekeeper."

She had a white, seamless face, sad, prayerful blue eyes too large for
the sockets, a little piquant nose that she had somehow managed to
bring along with her unchanged from a frivolous girlhood, and a quaint
old hymnal mouth. Looking up from the rug she took on an expression of
pure and undefiled piety and began in the strident, cackling tones of
an egg-laying hen:

"Your husband's goin' to have an awful hard time here, Sister Thompson.
The church is split wide open about the organ. Old man Walker wants it
on the right-hand side of the pulpit, and my sons have put it on the
left-hand side, where the light is good and the choir can see the musi