are $1,000 for prudent distribution in that direction.
Now, we are within four votes of having enough. $5,000
to that intelligent member from Westchester, and $2,000
to that stupid member from Ulster, and now we are
within two votes of having it. Give $500 to this
member, who will be sick and stay at home, and $300
to this member, who will go to see his great-aunt
languishing in her last sickness. The day has
come for the passing of the bill. The Speaker’s
gavel strikes. “Senators, are you ready
for the question? All in favour of voting away
these thousands of millions of dollars will say, ‘Ay.’”
“Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!” “The
Ays have it.” It was a merciful thing that
all this corruption went on under a republican form
of government. Any other style of government
would have been consumed by it long ago. There
were enough national swindles enacted in this country
after the war—yes, thirty years afterwards—to
swamp three monarchies.
The Democratic party filled its cup of iniquity as
it went out of power, before the war. Then the
Republican party came along and it filled its cup
of iniquity a little sooner; and there they lie, the
Democratic party and the Republican party, side by
side, great loathsome carcasses of iniquity, each
one worse than the other.
These are reminiscences of more than thirty years
ago, and yet it seems that I have never ceased to
fight the same sort of human temptations and frailties
to this very day.
1862-1877
I spent seven of the most delightful years of my life
in Philadelphia. What wonderful Gospel men were
round me in the City of Brotherly Love at this time—such
men as Rev. Alfred Barnes, Rev. Dr. Boardman, Rev.
Dr. Berg, Rev. Charles Wadsworth, and many others
equally distinguished. I should probably never
have left Philadelphia except that I was afraid I
would get too lazy. Being naturally indolent I
wanted to get somewhere where I would be compelled
to work. I have sometimes felt that I was naturally
the laziest man ever born. I am afraid of indolence—as
afraid of indolence as any reformed inebriate is afraid
of the wine cup. He knows if he shall take one
glass he will be flung back into inebriety. I
am afraid, if I should take one long pull of nothing
to do, I should stop forever.
My church in Philadelphia was a large one, and it
was crowded with lovely people. All that a congregation
could do for a pastor’s happiness they were
doing, and always had done.
We ministers living in Philadelphia at this time may
have felt the need for combating indolence, for we
had a ministerial ball club, and twice a week the
clergymen of all denominations went out to the suburbs
of the city and played baseball. We went back
to our pulpits, spirits lightened, theology improved,
and able to do better service for the cause of God
than we could have done without that healthful shaking
up.
