"Rev. Dr. Penloe:
"Dear Sir:—Our church in this city is an elegant structure and will seat twelve hundred persons. For some months we have been looking for a popular young man to fill our pulpit. It has been very difficult to find an up-to-date man, one that will draw a congregation to fill our church, for the audience keeps growing less every Sunday, because we have not got a real, live smart man to preach to us. We think if we could secure your services you would draw the largest congregation in this city, for your popularity has swept the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and we feel sure you are the right man. Our people are very sociable and well to do, many of our members being rich. We are willing to pay you a salary of seven thousand dollars a year, and the use of a handsome house elegantly furnished, and will allow you two months' vacation, besides paying your expenses to come here. We will say that, should you accept our offer, our people will be glad to receive you into their hearts and homes."
Penloe always answered all such communications, but as for accepting one of them it was out of the question; for he knew it was not his field of labor, and if the salary had been a hundred thousand dollars a year, it would have been no temptation or an inducement to him to accept the offer. For money, name and fame touched him not; and nothing could induce him to leave his path of labor for the sake of going into some new field of work which only held out large material rewards. He also received many offers from the owners of papers and magazines, asking him to write his views. The New York Monthly Magazine offered him one thousand dollars for an eight-page article on the sex question; provided he would not write on the subject for any other magazine or paper. Penloe accepted the offer because he considered that was the best channel to communicate to the world his views on the sex question. Its readers were of a class that could comprehend the subject in the spirit in which it was offered. And as for the thousand dollars Penloe had a sacred purpose he wished to use that money for. A man wrote to Penloe offering him forty thousand dollars if he would consent to lecture for one year in all the large cities in the United States. The man told a friend of his, he was sure after paying Penloe his forty thousand dollars and all other expenses, he would clear about sixty thousand dollars himself.
How true it is that a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. For Orangeville was the last place to feel the Penloe wave which swept over all the country. At last the people of Orangeville reading so much about him in their papers and magazines, began to think he was something more than a crank, that they must have a great man amongst them, or else he would never have received such big offers of money for his services as the papers stated he had, and there would not have been so much written about him if he was of no account.
Quite a change had come over the people in Roseland concerning Penloe, and they began to feel differently towards him since his wave of popularity had swept over the country. Even Stella's aunt had experienced a change of heart towards him, for she was heard to say, "People's ideas are changing now in regard to the sex question. They look at the subject so differently now from what they did when I was a girl. I did not think Penloe was such a smart man as the papers say he is. He must be, or else he never would have received an offer of forty thousand dollars to lecture for one year."
A man may possess all the characteristics of a saint and a martyr combined, and yet the average person is not attracted to him; but as soon as money and popularity flow towards him, then in his eyes he becomes next to a God; for people love to be touched on the material side of their nature rather than on the spiritual. They consider the spiritual well enough to talk about, and when a friend of theirs dies they may love to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" and "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," but what they really desire for themselves and families, above everything else, is a rich blessing of material things; that which makes well for the body and which puts them in a position to have full play of the emotional and sensational part of their natures.
So great was the desire among the people of Orangeville and Roseland, and in fact the whole county, to hear Penloe speak, and to see the man that so much had been said and written about, that a committee was sent to him with a request signed by the leading citizens, asking him to deliver an address to them in Roseland. Penloe accepted the invitation to speak. The committee secured the use of a large packing house for the meeting, and fixed it up so that it seated a very large audience, for they knew that the Penloe wave was at its height, and about every team from every ranch in the county would be out on that occasion. As the committee had well advertised more than a week ahead, that Penloe would deliver a public address, the news reached to many parts outside the county, so that when the day came for the meeting to be held a number of strangers from different parts of the state were seen in Roseland.
We will copy from a San Francisco paper a report of the meeting, as that paper had a special reporter there who gave a full report of the address.