usiness way. No one has yet had the courage to memorialize his wealth
on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there. The best
epitaph proclaims simple old Scripture virtues, like honesty and
diligence and patience. And you will observe that when the meanest
skinflint or the most disgracefully avaricious millionaire dies, his
tombstone never refers to his most notorious characteristics. His
friends speak not of his scandalous speculations, but of his
benevolences. Thus some of the most conscienceless rogues in a
generation go down to posterity with expurgated tablets to their
memory, which of course is best for posterity.

So I do not mind now admitting that William was a poor money-getter,
but he actually did have the virtues that look well recorded on his
tombstone. I can even recall, with a sort of tearful humor, some of
his efforts at practical church thinking. He entertained with naive
enthusiasm, for example, a certain proposition for regulating the
support of the ministry, and would have sent it as a memorial to the
General Conference, but for my interference. He had elaborated a plan
by which every Methodist preacher should receive his salary on the pro
rata basis as the superannuates do, according to the funds in hand, and
according to their needs. It would be taken like any other Conference
collection, turned in like any other to the treasury for this purpose.
But the preacher on a mountain circuit with a wife and eight children
would receive twenty-five hundred dollars, and the one with only a
wife, even though he might be the pastor of a rich city church, would
receive only a thousand dollars.

Such a distribution of income would have placed a premium upon
ministerial posterity and would have been as fatal as socialism to
competition for the best pulpits in the Church connection. But I did
not use this argument to William. He could not appreciate it. He was
even capable of claiming that it proved the virtue of his proposition.

"William," I exclaimed, when he confided in me, "promise me that you
will never mention this dreadful plan, not even to a steward or to the
Presiding Elder. It tends to Socialism, Communism and to Church
volcanics generally. Your reputation would be ruined if you were
suspected of entertaining such incendiary ideas!"

He was aghast, having always regarded the very terms I used to describe
his plan with righteous horror. And that was the last I ever heard