In the middle of our first year our little church received a staggering blow in the death of Mr. Philo S. Bennett.  We had become very intimate.  I dined with him once a week.  He was about to retire from business, and after a rest he was to give his time to the church idea.  He inquired about buildings, and he had fixed his mind on a $25,000 structure.  He spoke to others of these plans, but in Idaho, that summer, he was killed in an accident.  Mrs. Bennett sent for me and I took charge of the funeral arrangements.  Mr. Bryan came on at once and helped.  After the funeral he read and discussed the will.  I was present at several of these discussions.  The sealed letter written by the dead man was the bone of contention.  Then the lawyers came in and the case went into the courts.  The world knew but a fragment of the truth.  It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him.  He was the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of his friend should not be frustrated:  not merely with regard to the fifty thousand—­he offered to distribute that—­but with regard to the money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but because of his great business ability.  During the coal strike of 1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we organized among the working people a coal company.  The coal dealers blocked our plans everywhere.  We were shut out.  Then the idea came to us to charter a shipload and bring it from Glasgow.  It was the keen business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success.  We needed $15,000 to cable over.  I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went over them carefully and put up the money.  Before we needed it, however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs.  This, of course, was “interfering with business men’s affairs,” and the dealers in coal were not slow to express themselves.  I was a director of the coal company for some time.  The newspapers announced that I was going into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor ability in that direction.  It was a great day in New Haven when our ship entered the harbour and broke the siege.  We sold coal for half the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett’s death that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn’t leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building.  The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising.  Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action:  one is the Sunday School and the other is the loose membership of other churches.  The theft is usually deliberate.