“Gentlemen, we all know that Colonel Ingersoll dare not believe in God, but those of us who know Colonel Ingersoll and do believe in God know that God believes in him.”
The late T. DeWitt Talmage never lost a chance to emphasize a point with a good story. As I knew him to be a good man and a first-rate fellow, I used to be indignant at newspaper abuse of him, and particularly with some caricatures that were made of his expressive features. I took occasion to tell him of this, but he replied:
“Marshall, I’m as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros, and I never mind what is said about me. Some of the caricatures annoy me, but only because they pain people I love—my wife and family. You see, my boy, it doesn’t pay to be too sensitive, for it breaks a man up, and that’s the worst thing that can happen to him if he has any duties in the world. Besides, everything depends on the point of view. Once a German family emigrated to America and settled in Milwaukee. The oldest son, in his teens, concluded he would start out for himself. He ‘fetched up’ in New York, and without any money, so he wrote home, ‘Dear father, I am sick and lonely and without a single cent. Send me some money quick. Your son John.’ The old man couldn’t read, so he took the letter to a friend—a great strapping butcher with a loud gruff voice and an arrogant manner of reading. When the letter was read to him the father was furious and declared he would not send his son a cent—not even to keep him from starving. But on his way home he kept thinking about the letter and wanting to hear it again, so he took it to another friend—a consumptive undertaker who had a gentle voice with an appealing inflection in it. When this man read the letter the father burst into tears and exclaimed, ‘My poor boy! I shall send him all the money he wants.’ You see, the same thing viewed from a different point takes on a different color.”
After the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst visited some notorious New York “dives” and preached his famous sermon on New York politics he was the sensation of the day and also one of the best abused men in the land. He was besieged by reporters until he had scarcely time to say his prayers and came to hate the sight of a newspaper man. About that time I was making a trip to Rochester and saw Dr. Parkhurst enter the car I was in. I said to some friends:
“That is Dr. Parkhurst. Now watch me; I’m going to have some fun with him.”
His chair was at the other end of the car and he was having a good time with newspapers and magazines and far away, as he supposed, from reporters. I passed and repassed him two or three times; then, assuming as well as I could the manner of a newspaper man I stopped and said:
“Dr. Parkhurst, I believe?”
He looked up with a savage frown, and I saw that he took me for one of the tormenting fraternity. I continued in an insinuating, tooth-drawing manner until he became so chilling that I could hear the thermometer falling with heavy thuds. When I felt that I had made him as uncomfortable as I could I said,
“Pardon me, Doctor, but evidently you don’t remember me.” Then I handed him my card. His manner changed like a cloudy day when the sun breaks through, and he said cordially:
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Wilder. I mistook you for a reporter.”