“Although I never was a full member of the New Berlinopolisville Methodist church, I was treated as a sort of honorary member, partly because I subscribed pretty largely to the pastor’s salary, the annual picnics, and that sort of thing, and partly because the deacons, knowing that I had some little reputation as a theatrical manager and was a man of from fair to middling judgment, used to consult me quietly about the management of the church. There was a large Baptist church in the same town, and its opposition was a little too much for us. The Baptist house was crowded every Sunday, while ours was thin and discouraging. We had a good old gentleman for a minister, but he was over seventy, and a married man besides, which kept the women from taking much interest in him; while his old-fashioned notions didn’t suit the young men of the congregation. The Baptists, on the other hand, had a young unmarried preacher, with a voice that you could hear a quarter of a mile off, and a way of giving it to the Jews, and the Mormons, and other safe and distant sinners that filled his hearers with enthusiasm and offended nobody. It was growing more and more evident every day that our establishment was going behindhand, and that something must be done unless we were willing to close our doors and go into bankruptcy; so one day the whole board of trustees and all the deacons came round to talk the matter over with me.
“My mind was already made up, and I was only waiting to have my advice asked before giving it. ‘What we want,’ said I, ‘is a woman-preacher. She’ll be a sensation that will take the wind out of that Baptist windmill, and if she is good-looking, which she has got to be, I will bet you—that is, I am prepared to say—that within a fortnight there will be standing-room only in the old Methodist church.’
“‘But what are we to do with Dr. Brewster?’ asked one of the deacons. ‘He has been preaching to us now for forty years, and it don’t seem quite the square thing to turn him adrift.’
“‘Oh! that’s all right,’ said I. ‘We’ll retire him on a pension, and he’ll be glad enough to take it. As for your woman-preacher, I’ve got just what you want. At least, I know where she is and how much we’ll have to pay to get her. She’ll come fast enough for the same salary that we are paying Dr. Brewster, and if she doesn’t double the value of your pew-rents in six months, I will make up the deficit myself.’
“The trustees were willing to take my advice, and in the course of a few days Dr. Brewster had been retired on half-pay, the church had extended a call to the Rev. Matilda Marsh, and the reverend girl, finding that the salary was satisfactory, accepted it.
“She was only about twenty-five years old, and as pretty as a picture when she stood in the pulpit in her black silk dress with a narrow white collar, something like the sort of thing that your clergymen wear. I couldn’t help feeling sad, when I first saw her, to think that she did not go into the variety business or a circus, where she would have made her fortune and the fortune of any intelligent manager. As a dance-and-song artiste she would have been worth a good six hundred dollars a week. But women are always wasting their talents, when they have any, and doing exactly what Nature didn’t mean them to do.
“THE REV. MATILDA MARSH.”