g his lost lambs one at a time. Once he
insulted a man who came to him about the Laymen's Movement which is
organized to convert the world to Christianity in this generation and
probably before Christmas.

"We can do it if we have faith enough!" said he.

"No, you can't!" retorted William. "Not unless the heathens get faith
enough to believe, and faith is a thing you cannot send out through the
mails as if it was sample packages of patent medicine!"

Such talk as that sent him back to the circuits, where there were the
same old fashions in sleeves and headgear for women, and where he could
take his text from Jonah's gourd if he chose, without exciting the
higher critical faculties of his congregation.

It was harder on us in some ways. I never could understand why the old
preachers who have got rheumatism in their knees, and maybe lumbago
besides, should be sent back to the exposure of all weathers on the
circuits, while the young ones with plenty of oil in their joints
fatten in the more comfortable charges. And I am not the one to say
with resignation that it is "all right." Still, the good God evens
things up in wonderful ways.

William got so stiff in his legs toward the last that he had to stand
up to pray; but we had come back to the region of simplicities, where
there were just three elements to consider and put together in his
sermons--Man, his field and his God, and they were only separated by a
little grass, a few stars and the creation light and darkness of days
and nights. When a man gets as near home as that he does not mind the
pains in his mere body. At least William never complained.

Looking back, I think he was at his best about the time he went back to
the real circuit itinerancy. He had the glory of presence. Faith, I
think, gave him a halo. You could not see it, but you could feel it,
and in this connection I recall an illustration of the difference
between such a halo and the "aura" we hear so much about these days
from people who think they are interested in psychic phenomena, but who
are really psychic epileptics.

We were on a circuit which included a summer resort, and the varieties
of diseases among patients in a sanitarium are as nothing compared to
the mental, moral, spiritual and physical disorders to be found among
the class who frequent "springs." To this place came a "New Thoughter"
who was always in a spiritual sweat about her "astral shape." She
manifested a condesce