good mood.  Deacon Goodsole was delighted.  Jim Wheaton was scarcely less so, and even Mr. Hardcap was pleased to say that it was “a real plain Gospel sermon.”  Deacon Goodsole found an old friend in one of the congregation and went home with him to dinner, while Mr. Wheaton and Mr. Hardcap went back to the hotel.  Deacon Goodsole joined them in the evening and brought a good report of the Sunday-school, where he had watched the unconscious parson (who superintends his own school), and had even, to avoid suspicion, taken the place of an absent teacher for the afternoon.

Mr. Wheaton had to return the next day, but the Deacon found no great difficulty in persuading Mr. Hardcap to stay over, and Tuesday evening they went to the weekly prayer-meeting.  Meanwhile they inquired quietly in the neighborhood about the preacher at the Corners, giving however no one a hint of their object, except the parson at Koniwasset who commended Maurice very highly for his piety and his efficiency.  As to his preaching, he said he should not call him eloquent, “but” he added, “there is one thing; Maurice Mapleson never speaks without having something to say; and he is very much in earnest.”

Both the Deacon and Mr. Hardcap were very much pleased with the spirit of the prayer-meeting—­the Deacon said Mr. Mapleson could make more of a fire with less fuel than any man he knew—­and when the committee made their report, which they did at the close of our Wednesday evening meeting, it was unanimous in favor of giving Maurice a call.

To call a man without hearing him was not the orthodox way, and the objections which Mr. Hardcap had originally proposed in the committee meeting were renewed by others.  In reply it was said, very truly, that the church really knew more about Mr. Mapleson than they could possibly learn from a trial sermon, or even from half a dozen of them, that a careful investigation by a committee into his actual working power was a far better test than any pulpit exhibition, however brillant.  I added that Mapleson’s letter was positive, and his convictions settled, and that I felt reasonably certain he would not preach as a candidate.  On the whole this increased the desire to get him; and finally a second committee was appointed to go and hear him.  A couple of ladies were put, informally, on this committee, and the church paid the expenses of the four.  I say informally.  Deacon Goodsole nominated Miss Moore and Mrs. Biskit, and quoted the case of Phoebe from the sixteenth chapter of Romans to prove that it was apostolic.  But the ladies shook their heads, as did some of the elders of the church and Mr. Hardcap entered a vigorous protest.  The Deacon was a born and bred Congregationalist, and is radical, I am afraid, in church matters.  A compromise was finally effected by appointing two of the elders, who agreed to take their wives.