for their families, on $200 or $300 a year, if they had even as much as that. Yet has it ever come into the head of one in five hundred to inquire whether these families have now bread to eat and a roof over them, although among them are numbered gray, weather-beaten scholars and worn-out women of refinement and culture?

One minister I knew left Amherst with high honors. In scientific studies the faculty considered him the peer of Mitchell and Silliman, classmates if I remember. He wished to go as missionary to China, but his health breaking from hard study he was sent west as home missionary in the Wabash Valley. There he regained some health by such rude treatment as riding thirty miles a day, preaching at night and sleeping on the floor in a settler's cabin after a supper of corn pone and milk. He preached week-days and Sundays on his circuit, which did not allow services oftener than once a fortnight, the stations were so separated. Presbyterians rode circuit then as well as Methodists. When his strength would bear this life no longer he started a seminary, his wife, from the finest school in Beacon Hill, Boston, teaching her French and drawing classes with her baby at her feet, for they had no servant. Schools were needed west, and he taught and preached by turns, his boys always taking best rank in college by their thorough preparation and discipline.

After fifteen years of this life, a small legacy falling in allowed him to take his family from the ague-smitten region to a homestead in the northwest. Here he felt he could preach and be useful, gaining full health and relieving the church of much of his support by working a farm after the old ministerial fashion. He went on the unbroken prairie, fenced his land, built his house, and gathered a small church. He was literally the hardest worker I ever knew-up at four o'clock and in the field till he could no longer see, the only signal for his coming in; studying commentary and Greek Testament while his farm hands took their nooning, studying his sermon over plough and reaper, and coming in to write it. The first three years the church paid nothing for preaching, being in Ohio phrase "poor as skim poverty," in the grip of high taxes and interest on their unpaid farms, and harvests ruined by floods one year and drought the next. Afterward they gave him $50 or $60 a year, the Home Missionary Society sending $150.

The family lived first in a building 16 by 24, meant for a granary, after the new settler's

usage; the bookcase with its Greek and Hebrew and English classics within five feet of the cooking stove, the space between sacred to sermon-writing and the wife's occasional articles for the magazines. In three years they moved into the half-finished dwelling, which circumstances never allowed them to complete. The time came when they wept to be back in the plain house, coarsely dressed, but free of the wasting anxiety where next week's bread was to come from, or whether they could keep a roof overhead from month to month.

The difficulties of first settling were over, the farmers began to drive around in smart carriages, make improvements and subscribe. for a railroad. The old minister was too strict for their notions about such things as Sundaykeeping and horse-racing. When under stress of duty he preached on the obligations of Christians to give as they prospered to foreign missions and grasshopper sufferers and the charities of the church, it broke that church's back. In two weeks a committee waited on him to say they would relieve him from further ministry to that church. He was getting old with hard work and trouble, bowed meekly to the pain of seeing his unselfish labors so lightly esteemed, and never suffered one of his family to say a hasty word against the decision. The frank Scotch members protested warmly against the change, but he soothed the feeling, and welcomed the young minister from the East with his bride in wedding freshness.

A sharp winter left the youngest, brightest girl in consumption, and the child turned her face to the wall and made haste to die. Other sickness and accident and losses of every sort brought the burden heavier on the toiling shoulders. The slender wife had borne her part heroically, working without help for family and hired men, walking miles after her day's work to watch by a sick neighbor, or attend a prayer-meeting when her husband was too sick to rise. She wore calico to church season after season, and denied herself every comfort to send the only daughter left a few terms to better schools. The daughter studied her Latin and German nights after she was in bed, and drove reaper or cut the corn when help was scarce and the father down with harvest fever. The mother even taught the district school in summer, doing her own housework mornings, noons and nights; but when by every sacrifice her heart could compass the girl was well started away from home, her own system took terrible revenge, and for eighteen years made her life torture with neuralgia of

the worst kind. She was a woman who carried great endurance in a frail form, and there was no giving up in her case to disease that would have left most women useless. Church, prayermeeting, society, for most of those years were forbidden, for the hourly maddening pain that seized her wrung cries from her resolute lips. Speechless weeks together, fasting from food and drink for days to escape the torture of moving her mouth, reduced to a weight of eighty pounds, the woman would go about caring for her family while strength lasted, stopping to wrestle with pain that whitened her face like that of a corpse, and after the agony go on with the mending or sweeping as before. The farm was sold, and they came east-the father deaf and infirm and beaten down with trouble. The daughter, most sadly widowed within two years of her marriage, lost her little all in the Chicago fire, and took care of the family with her own support. She was able to buy a cottage where the mother could be in reach of a doctor and the young brothers at school; but it took seven years out of her life at the work that feeds on nerve and brain. Part of her mother's gift fell to her share, and she found work as a writer. You may have read her articles, written, with portfolio resting on her sleeping baby in her lap, between nine and two at night, when other care was done for the day, or pencilled on the lounge when she could not sit up for the ache of an overdone frame. She could not be sure of work away from the city, and so the family joined her east. Then the struggle began.

Figure to yourself the rents and expense of living near the city, with six people, old, invalid or too young to help, to be kept in any comfort by the uncertain earnings of a boy and this young woman, half the time disabled with nervous disease aggravated by her writing at pressure. The shrewd economy, the unselfish sharing of burdens and of the common purse, with handy tastes quick to make the most of everything, made life bearable, and gave the full flavor of their few pleasures.

The hot summer of 1878 the family were seized with the malaria fever that raged about the city. One rose tottering to care for those who were helpless. The winter that followed need not be dwelt upon; the weeks when brain and hand refused her bidding any longer; when they humbly prayed for death to relieve the mother's agonies the cold thin house made worse; the brother living at home to give all his earnings to the family, starting by starlight

every morning for his mile walk to the station and nineteen miles by train to the city, ten hours at work in the fetid office, and back in the evening. No wonder he had hemorrhage next spring, that followed season after season till he died. The sister would have died to join him if she might, they had been so near in tastes, had struggled so hard and borne so much together that no one could ever know or understand again.

The western presbytery to which her father had belonged kindly sent the parents to the Ministers' House at Perth Amboy, for they were past working for anybody. There for the first time in thirty years, free from harassing cares and in thorough comfort and rest, the Scourge of the mother's disease has abated. She still suffers daily and acutely, and speech is still a privilege, but God in mercy has stayed his east wind in the time of his rough wind.

It will be necessary to assure some people, comfortably ignorant of what goes on in the world about them, that this story of a minister's family is true, wholly and in detail. The straits to which careful families are brought by failing strength and means are unknown to their next neighbors, and old pastors and teachers fare worst of all. I do not count the fortunate dead, overwrought and early released from their labors, but there are too many pastors' wives insane or living in torment of chronic neuralgia, that avenging angel of overwork and care. Theirs forever is the struggle between straitened means and limitless demands on sympathies, strength, purse and appearances, from the country minister's wife doing her own washing with a three weeks baby, to the city pastor's wife I met fagged and worn out trying to find a cloak for her baby cheap enough to suit her purse, because she had not time to make one, and every dollar of the $1800 salary was strained to meet the demands of a society which expected them to live as if they had $5000. I saw the private note-book of an old beneficiary of the Ministers' House at Perth Amboy not long ago. He and his invalid wife had lived on $300 a year a long time, and of this $30 a year went in charities and mission funds. When their son died, and the administrator made way with the little property coming to them, there was nothing but the Board of Relief between these aged servants of the church and the poorhouse. Who makes a point to know if such poor ministers are provided for, or by what shift and suffering they make out to live?

longs by right to the bodies holding the episcopate in their several denominations, whether it be individual bishops or ecclesiastical bodies like the presbytery or synod or classis. But the great obstacle to be encountered in every instance is the independent spirit of the churches. They resent control or even interference, and prefer to take their own course. The result oftentimes is that, owing to bad taste or lack of discernment, sterling worth is rejected and shallow display carries the day. Still further, in the competition which ensues modest men feel they have no place or chance, and keep themselves aloof. So many an excellent laborer continues a W. C. If ever a condition of things demanded from our ecclesiastical bodies earnest consideration and the wisdom which is profitable to direct, this does.

But what has all this to do with the Board of Education? Much in many ways. In these unemployed ministers it encounters a strong objection in the minds of the people against further efforts to multiply ministers. Again, it does not like to see any whom it has aided in educating compelled by unwarrantable neglect to fail in rendering the church remunerative services. Still further, it does not like to hear calls for more men from vacant churches and unoccupied fields when there are so many ready and willing and able to do good work suffering from lack of employment. Therefore it feels strongly impelled to unite with the many who are pondering and discussing this subject in pressing it upon the candid and time-taking attention of ecclesiastical bodies.

Will it be regarded as presumption if we offer a suggestion or two on this point?

1. That every presbytery, in discharging its duty of care and control over its constituent churches and ministers, appoint a committee of the most judicious members of its body to co-operate with the committees of vacant churches appointed to select a pastor or stated supply, and that such cooperation shall be obligatory upon all.

2. That all applications of candidates for the vacant pulpit shall be sent to this joint

committee, and none be invited to supply the pulpit except under their joint approval.

3. That every candidate shall have a fair opportunity of making his qualifications known to the church.

ren.

The effect of such measures would be to exclude questionable men from entering and fortifying themselves in a church, and to secure to our worthy unemployed brethren a fair chance of occupying vacant fields through the recommendation of their brethThough these measures may not accomplish all that could be desired, they would be helpful toward it. The care of the presbytery would then be brought to bear on every vacant church and its own preferences be at the same time respected. Moreover, the Board will be enabled to give additional assurance to the young men whom it seeks to enlist in the gospel service that, if worthy, they will be cared for and aided by their brethren in their efforts to secure a field of labor.

A RECOMMENDATION.

In the September number of the Homiletic Review there is an article on the importance of ministers cultivating the voice, which we commend to the careful study of all candidates for the ministry as well as of ministers themselves. This week there came a minister into our office, who told us that he had been desirous of getting a supply for his pulpit during his absence, with some thought that if acceptable to the people he might resign in the other's favor; and to this effect he had engaged three of his brethren successively, but all three failed of winning the people simply from lack of ability to make themselves distinctly heard. Were we asked for one of the main causes why so many excellent men get to be, and remain, W. C.'s so long, we would say it is from lack of a sufficient and clearly-articulated utterance. An audience does not like to be taxed in listening to a preacher, and many will not tolerate the exaction long. To avoid such an obstacle to success we advise all to get and read that article in the Homiletic