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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Minister's Great Opportunity, by
+Heman White Chaplin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The New Minister's Great Opportunity
+       First published in the “Century Magazine”
+
+Author: Heman White Chaplin
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23003]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MINISTER'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW MINISTER'S GREAT OPPORTUNITY.
+
+By Heman White Chaplin
+
+1887
+
+First published in the “Century Magazine.”
+
+
+“The minister's got a job,” said Mr. Snell.
+
+Mr. Snell had been driven in by a shower from the painting of a barn,
+and was now sitting, with one bedaubed overall leg crossed over the
+other, in Mr. Hamblin's shop.
+
+Half-a-dozen other men, who had likewise found in the rain a call to
+leisure, looked up at him inquiringly.
+
+“How do you mean?” said Mr. Noyes, who sat beside him, girt with a
+nail-pocket. “'The minister 's got a job'? How do you mean?” And Mr.
+Noyes assumed a listener's air, and stroked his thin yellow beard.
+
+Mr. Snell smiled, with half-shut, knowing eyes, but made no answer.
+
+“How do you mean?” repeated Mr. Noyes; “'The minister's got a job'--of
+course he has--got a stiddy job. We knew that before.”
+
+“Very well,” said Mr. Snell, with a placid face; “seeing's you know so
+much about it, enough said. Let it rest right there.”
+
+“But,” said Mr. Noyes, nervously blowing his nose; “you lay down this
+proposition: 'The minister's got a job.' Now I ask, what is it?”
+
+Mr. Snell uncrossed his legs, and stooped to pick up a last, which he
+proceeded to scan with a shrewd, critical eye.
+
+“Narrer foot,” he said to Mr. Hamblin.
+
+“Private last--Dr. Hunter's,” said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon
+which he was stitching an outer-sole, and rising to make a ponderous,
+elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen
+water-pitcher, from which he took a generous draught.
+
+“Well, Brother Snell,” said Mr. Noyes,--they were members together of a
+secret organization, of which Mr. Snell was P. G. W. T. F.,--“ain't you
+going to tell us? What--is this job? That is to say, what--er--is it?”
+
+Brother Snell set his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat,
+surveyed the smoke-stained pictures pasted on the wall, looked keen, and
+softly whistled.
+
+At last he condescended to explain.
+
+“Preaching Uncle Capen's funeral sermon.”
+
+There was a subdued general laugh. Even Mr. Hamblin's leathern apron
+shook.
+
+Mr. Noyes, however, painfully looking down upon his beard to draw out a
+white hair, maintained his serious expression.
+
+“I don't see much 'job' in that,” he said; “a minister's supposed to
+preach a hundred and four sermons in each and every year, and there's
+plenty more where they come from. What's one sermon more or less, when
+stock costs nothing? It's like wheeling gravel from the pit.”
+
+“O.K.,” said Mr. Snell; “if 't aint no trouble, then 't ain't But
+seeing's you know, suppose you specify the materials for this particular
+discourse.”
+
+Mr. Noyes looked a little disconcerted.
+
+“Well,” he said; “of course, I can't set here and compose a funereal
+discourse, off-hand, without no writing-desk; but there's stock enough
+to make a sermon of, any time.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Mr. Snell, “don't sneak out: particularize.”
+
+“Why,” said Mr. Noyes, “you 've only to open the leds of your Bible, and
+choose a text, and then: When did this happen? Why did this happen? To
+who did this happen? and so forth and so on; and there's your sermon. I
+'ve heard 'em so a hunderd times.”
+
+“All right,” said Mr. Snell; “I don't doubt you know; but as for me,
+I for one never happened to hear of anything that Uncle Capen did but
+whitewash and saw wood. Now what sort of an autobiographical sermon
+could you make out of sawing wood?”
+
+Whereat Leander Buffum proceeded, by that harsh, guttural noise well
+known to country boys, to imitate the sound of sawing through a log. His
+sally was warmly greeted.
+
+“The minister might narrate,” said Mr. Blood, “what Uncle Capen said to
+Issachar, when Issachar told him that he charged high for sawing wood.
+'See here,' says Uncle Capen, 's'pos'n I do. My arms are shorter'n other
+folks's, and it takes me just so much longer to do it.'”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Noyes, “I'm a fair man; always do exactly right is the
+rule I go by; and I will frankly admit, now and here, that if it's a
+biographical discourse they want, they 'll have to cut corners.”
+
+“_Pre-cise-ly_” said Mr. Snell; “and that's just what they do want.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Mr. Hamblin, laboriously rising and putting his
+spectacles into their silver case,--for it was supper-time,--“joking one
+side, if Uncle Capen never did set the pond afire, we 'd all rather take
+his chances to-day, I guess, than those of some smarter men.”
+
+At which Mr. Snell turned red; for he was a very smart man and had just
+failed,--to everybody's surprise, since there was no reason in the world
+why he should fail,--and had created more merriment for the public than
+joy among his creditors, by paying a cent and a half on the dollar.
+
+“Come in; sit down,” said Dr. Hunter, as the young minister appeared at
+his office door; and he tipped back in his chair, and put his feet upon
+a table. “What's the news?”
+
+“Doctor,” said Mr. Holt, laughing, as he laid down his hat and took an
+arm-chair; “you told me to come to you for any information. Now I want
+materials for a sermon on old Mr. Capen.”
+
+The Doctor looked at him with a half-amused expression, and then sending
+out a curl of blue smoke, he watched it as it rose melting into the
+general air.
+
+“You don't smoke, I believe?” he said to the minister.
+
+Holt smiled and shook his head.
+
+The Doctor put his cigar back into his mouth, clasped one knee in his
+hands, and fixed his eyes in meditation on a one-eared Hippocrates
+looking down with a dirty face from the top of a bookcase. Perhaps the
+Doctor was thinking of the two or three hundred complimentary visits he
+had been permitted to make upon Uncle Capen within ten years.
+
+Presently a smile broke over his face.
+
+“I must tell you, before I forget it,” he said, “how Uncle Capen
+nursed one of my patients. Years and years ago, I had John Ellis, our
+postmaster now, down with a fever. One night Uncle Capen watched--you
+know he was spry and active till he was ninety. Every hour he was to
+give Ellis a little ice-water; and when the first time came, he took a
+table-spoonful--there was only a dim light in the room--and poured the
+ice-water down Ellis's neck. Well, Ellis jumped, as much as so sick a
+man could, and then lifted his finger to his lips: 'Here 's my mouth,'
+said he. 'Why, why,' said Uncle Capen, 'is that your mouth? I took that
+for a wrinkle in your forehead.”
+
+The minister laughed.
+
+“I have heard a score of such stories to-day,” he said; “there seem to
+be enough of them; but I can't find anything adapted to a sermon, and
+yet they seem to expect a detailed biography.”
+
+“Ah, that's just the trouble,” said the Doctor. “But let us go into the
+house; my wife remembers everything that ever happens, and she can post
+you up on Uncle Capen, if anybody can.”
+
+So they crossed the door-yard into the house.
+
+Mrs. Hunter was sewing; a neighbor, come to tea, was crocheting wristers
+for her grandson.
+
+They were both talking at once as the Doctor opened the sitting-room
+door.
+
+“Since neither of you appears to be listening,” he said, as they started
+up, “I shall not apologize for interrupting. Mr. Holt is collecting
+facts about Uncle Capen for his funeral sermon, and I thought that my
+good wife could help him out, if anybody could. So I will leave him.”
+
+And the Doctor, nodding, went into the hall for his coat and
+driving-gloves, and, going out, disappeared about the corner of the
+house.
+
+“You will really oblige me very much, Mrs. Hunter,” said the minister,
+“--or Mrs. French,--if you can give me any particulars about old Mr.
+Capen's life. His family seem to be rather sensitive, and they depend
+on a long, old-fashioned funeral sermon; and here I am utterly bare of
+facts.”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Hunter; “of course, now--”
+
+“Why, yes; everybody knows all about him,” said Mrs. French.
+
+And then they laid their work down and relapsed into meditation.
+
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Hunter, in a moment. “No, though--”
+
+“Why, you know,” said Mrs. French,--“no--I guess, on the whole--”
+
+“You remember,” said the Doctor's wife to Mrs. French, with a faint
+smile, “the time he papered my east chamber--don't you--how he made the
+pattern come?”
+
+And then they both laughed gently for a moment.
+
+“Well, I have always known him,” said Mrs. French. “But really, being
+asked so suddenly, it seems to drive everything out of my head.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Hunter, “and it's odd that I can't think of exactly
+the thing, just at this min-ute; but if I do, I will run over to the
+parsonage this evening.”
+
+“Yes, so will I,” said Mrs. French; “I know that I shall think of oceans
+of things just as soon as you are gone.”
+
+“Won't you stay to tea?” said Mrs. Hunter, as Holt rose to go. “The
+Doctor has gone; but we never count on him.”
+
+“No, I thank you,” said Mr. Holt. “If I am to invent a biography, I may
+as well be at it.”
+
+Mrs. Hunter went with him to the door.
+
+“I must just tell you,” she said, “one of Uncle Capen's sayings. It was
+long ago, at the time I was married and first came here. I had a young
+men's Bible-class in Sunday-school, and Uncle Capen came into it. He
+always wore a cap, and sat at meetings with the boys. So, one Sunday,
+we had in the lesson that verse,--you know,--that if all these things
+should be written, even the world itself could not contain the books
+that should be written; and there Uncle Capen stopped me, and said he,
+'I suppose that means the world as known to the ancients?'”
+
+Holt put on his hat, and with a smile turned and went on his way toward
+the parsonage; but he remembered that he had promised to call at what
+the local paper termed “the late residence of the deceased,” where, on
+the one hundredth birthday of the centenarian, according to the poet's
+corner,--
+
+     “Friends, neighbors, and visitors he did receive
+     From early in the morning till dewy eve.”
+
+So he turned his steps in that direction. He opened the clicking latch
+of the gate and rattled the knocker on the front door of the little
+cottage; and a tall, motherly woman of the neighborhood appeared and
+ushered him in.
+
+Uncle Capen's unmarried daughter, a woman of sixty, her two brothers
+and their wives, and half-a-dozen neighbors were sitting in the tidy
+kitchen, where a crackling wood-fire in the stove was suggesting a
+hospitable cup of tea.
+
+The ministers appearance, breaking the formal gloom, was welcomed.
+
+“Well,” said Miss Maria, “I suppose the sermon is all writ by this time.
+I think likely you 've come down to read it to us.”
+
+“No,” said Holt, “I have left the actual writing of it till I get all my
+facts. I thought perhaps you might have thought of something else.”
+
+“No; I told you everything there was about father yesterday,” she said.
+“I 'm sure you can't lack of things to put in; why, father lived a
+hundred years--and longer, too, for he was a hundred years and six days,
+you remember.”
+
+“You know,” said Holt, “there are a great many things that are very
+interesting to a man's immediate friends that don't interest the
+public.” And he looked to Mr. Small for confirmation.
+
+“Yes, that 's so,” said Mr. Small, nodding wisely.
+
+“But, you see, father was a centenarian,” said Maria, “and so that makes
+everything about him interesting. It's a lesson to the young, you know.”
+
+“Oh, yes, that's so,” said Mr. Small, “if a man lives to be a
+centurion.”
+
+“Well, you all knew our good friend,” said Mr. Holt. “If any of you will
+suggest anything, I shall be very glad to put it in.”
+
+Nobody spoke for a moment.
+
+“There's one interesting thing,” said one of the sons, a little old man
+much like his father; “that is, that none of his children have ever gone
+meandering off; we've all remained”--he might almost have said remained
+seated--“all our lives, right about him.”
+
+“I will allude to that,” said Mr. Holt. “I hope you have something else,
+for I am afraid of running short of material: you see I am a stranger
+here.”
+
+“Why, I hope there won't be any trouble about it,” said Maria, in sudden
+consternation. “I was a little afraid to give it out to so young a man
+as you, and I thought some of giving the preference to Father Cobb, but
+I did n't quite like to have it go out of the village, nor to deprive
+you of the opportunity; and they all assured me that you was smart. But
+if you 're feeling nervous, perhaps we 'd better have him still; he 's
+always ready.”
+
+“Just as you like,” said Holt, modestly; “if he would be willing to
+preach the sermon, we might leave it that way, and I will add a few
+remarks.” But Maria's zeal for Father Cobb was a flash in the pan. He
+was a sickly farmer, a licensed preacher, who, when he was called
+upon occasionally to meet a sudden exigency, usually preached on the
+beheading of John the Baptist.
+
+“I guess you 've got things enough to write,” said Maria, consolingly;
+“you know how awfully a thing doos drag out when you come to write it
+down on paper. Remember to tell how we 've all stayed right here.”
+
+When Holt went out, he saw Mr. Small beckoning him to come to where his
+green wagon stood under a tree.
+
+“I must tell you,” he said, with an awkwardly repressed smile, “about a
+trade of Uncle Capen's. He had a little lot up our way that they wanted
+for a schoolhouse, and he agreed to sell it for what it cost him, and
+the selectmen, knowing what it cost him,--fifty dollars,--agreed
+with him that way. But come to sign the deed, he called for a hundred
+dollars. 'How 's that,' says they; 'you bought it of Captain Sam Bowen
+for fifty dollars.' 'Yes, but see here,' says Uncle Capen, 'it's cost
+me on an average five dollars a year, for the ten year I 've had it, for
+manure and ploughing and seed, and that's fifty dollars more.' But you
+'ve sold the garden stuff off it, and had the money,' says they. 'Yes,'
+says Uncle Capen, 'but that money 's spent and eat up long ago!'”
+
+The minister smiled, shook hands with Mr. Small, and went home.
+
+The church was crowded. Horses filled the sheds, horses were tied to the
+fences all up and down the street. Funerals are always popular in the
+country, and this one had a double element of attractiveness. The whole
+population of the town, having watched with a lively interest, for years
+back, Uncle Capen's progress to his hundredth birthday, expected now
+some electrical effect, analogous to an apotheosis.
+
+In the front pews were the chief mourners, filled with the sweet
+intoxication of pre-eminence.
+
+The opening exercises were finished, a hymn was sung,--
+
+     “Life is a span,”
+
+and Father Cobb arose to make his introductory remarks.
+
+He began with some reminiscences of the first time he saw Uncle Capen,
+some thirty years before, and spoke of having viewed him even then as
+an aged man, and of having remarked to him that he was walking down the
+valley of life with one foot in the grave. He called attention to Uncle
+Capen's virtues, and pointed out their connection with his longevity.
+He had not smoked for some forty years; therefore, if the youth who were
+present desired to attain his age, let them not smoke. He had been a
+total abstainer, moreover, from his seventieth year; let them, if they
+would rival his longevity, follow his example. The good man closed with
+a feeling allusion to the relatives, in the front pew, mourning like the
+disciples of John the Baptist after his “beheadment” Another hymn was
+sung,--
+
+     “A vapor brief and swiftly gone.”
+
+Then there was deep silence as the minister rose and gave out his text:
+“_I have been young, and now I am old_.”
+
+“At the time of the grand review in Washington,” he said, “that mighty
+pageant that fittingly closed the drama of the war, I was a spectator,
+crippled then by a gun-shot wound, and unable to march. From an upper
+window I saw that host file by, about to record its greatest triumph by
+melting quietly into the general citizenship,--a mighty, resistless army
+about to fade and leave no trace, except here and there a one-armed man,
+or a blue flannel jacket behind a plough. Often now, when I close my
+eyes, that picture rises: that gallant host, those tattered flags; and
+I hear the shouts that rose when my brigade, with their flaming scarfs,
+went trooping by. Little as I may have done, as a humble member of that
+army, no earthly treasure could buy from me the thought of my fellowship
+with it, or even the memory of that great review.
+
+“But that display was mere tinsel show compared with the great pageant
+that has moved before those few men who have lived through the whole
+length of the past hundred years.
+
+“Before me lies the form of a man who, though he has passed his days
+with no distinction but that of an honest man, has lived through some of
+the most remarkable events of all the ages. For a hundred years a mighty
+pageant has been passing before him. I would rather have lived that
+hundred years than any other. I am deeply touched to reflect that he who
+lately inhabited this cold tenement of clay connects our generation with
+that of Washington. And it is impossible to speak of one whose great age
+draws together this assembly, without recalling events through which he
+lived.
+
+“Our friend was born in this village. This town then included the
+adjoining towns to the north and south. The region was then more
+sparsely settled, although many houses standing then have disappeared.
+While he was sleeping peacefully in the cradle, while he was opening on
+the world childhood's wide, wondering eyes, those great men whose names
+are our perpetual benediction were planning for freedom from a foreign
+yoke. While he was passing through the happy years of early-childhood,
+the fierce clash of arms resounded through the little strip of territory
+which then made up the United States. I can hardly realize that, as a
+child, he heard as a fresh, new, real story, of the deeds of Lexington,
+from the lips of men then young who had been in the fight, or listened
+as one of an eager group gathered about the fireside, or in the old, now
+deserted tavern on the turnpike, to the story of Bunker Hill.
+
+“And when, the yoke of tyranny thrown off, in our country and in France,
+Lafayette, the mere mention of whose name brings tears to the eyes of
+every true American, came to see the America that he loved and that
+loved him, he on whose cold, rigid face I now look down, joined in one
+of those enthusiastic throngs that made the visit like a Roman Triumph.
+
+“But turn to the world of Nature, and think of the panoramic scenes that
+have passed before those now impassive eyes. In our friend's boyhood
+there was no practical mode of swift communication of news. In great
+emergencies, to be sure, some patriot hand might flash the beacon-light
+from a lofty tower; but news crept slowly over our hand-breath nation,
+and it was months after a presidential election before the result was
+generally known. He lived to see the telegraph flashing swiftly about
+the globe, annihilating time and space and bringing the scattered
+nations into greater unity.
+
+“And think, my hearers, for one moment, of the wonders of electricity.
+Here is a power which we name but do not know; which flashes through
+the sky, shatters great trees, burns buildings, strikes men dead in the
+fields; and we have learned to lead it, all unseen, from our house-tops
+to the earth; we tame this mighty, secret, unknown power into serving us
+as a a daily messenger; and no man sets the limits now to the servitude
+that we shall yet bind it down to.
+
+“Again, my hearers, when our friend was well advanced in life, there
+was still no better mode of travel between distant points than the slow,
+rumbling stage-coach; many who are here remember well its delays and
+discomforts. He saw the first tentative efforts of that mighty factor
+steam to transport more swiftly. He saw the first railroad built in the
+country; he lived to see the land covered with the iron net-work.
+
+“And what a transition is this! Pause for a moment to consider it.
+How much does this imply. With the late improvements in agricultural
+machinery, with the cheapening of steel rails, the boundless prairie
+farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields
+of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman's table, and seem not
+unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding
+of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself.”
+
+So the preacher continued, speaking of different improvements, and
+lastly of the invention of daguerreotypes and photographs. He called
+the attention of his hearers to this almost miraculous art of indelibly
+fixing the expression of a countenance, and drew a lesson as to the
+permanent effect of our daily looks and expression on those among whom
+we live. He considered at length the vast amount of happiness which had
+been caused by bringing pictures of loved ones within the reach of all;
+the increase of family affection and general good feeling which must
+have resulted from the invention; he suggested a possible change in the
+civilization of the older nations through the constant sending home, by
+prosperous adopted citizens, of photographs of themselves and of
+their homes, and alluded to the effect which this must have had upon
+immigration.
+
+Finally he adverted to the fact that the sons of the deceased, who sat
+before him, had not yielded to the restless spirit of adventure, but had
+found “no place like home.”
+
+“But I fear,” he said at last, “that the interest of my subject has made
+me transgress upon your patience; and with a word or two more I will
+close.
+
+“When we remember what hard, trying things often arise within a single
+day, let us rightly estimate the patient well-doing of a man who has
+lived a blameless life for a hundred years. When we remember what harm,
+what sin, can be crowded into a single moment, let us rightly estimate
+the principle that kept him so close to the Golden Rule, not for a day,
+not for a decade or a generation, but for a hundred years.
+
+“And now, as we are about to lay his deserted body in the earth, let not
+our perceptions be dulled by the constant repetition in this world of
+death and burial. At this hour our friend is no longer aged; wrinkles
+and furrows, trembling limbs and snowy locks he has left behind him, and
+he knows, we believe, to-day, more than the wisest philosopher on earth.
+We may study and argue, all our lives, to discover the nature of life,
+or the form it takes beyond the grave; but in one moment of swift
+transition the righteous man may learn it all. We differ widely one from
+another, here, in mental power. A slight hardening of some tissue of
+the brain might have left a Shakspeare an attorney's clerk. But, in the
+brighter world, no such impediments prevent, I believe, clear vision and
+clear expression; and differences of mind that seem world-wide here, may
+vanish there. When the spirit breaks its earthly prison and flies away,
+who can tell how bright and free the humblest of us may come to
+be! There may be a more varied truth than we commonly think, in the
+words,--'The last shall be first.'
+
+“Let this day be remembered. Let us think of the vast display of
+Nature's forces which was made within the long period of our old
+neighbor's life; but let us also reflect upon the bright pageant that is
+now unrolling itself before him in a better world.”
+
+That evening Miss Maria and her brothers, sitting in state in the little
+old house, received many a caller; and the conversation was chiefly upon
+one theme,--not the funeral sermon, although that was commended as a
+frank and simple biographical discourse, but the great events which had
+accompanied Uncle Capen's progress through this world, almost like those
+which Horace records in his Ode to Augustus.
+
+“That's trew, every word,” said Apollos Carver; “when Uncle Capen was
+a boy there wasn't not one railroad in the hull breadth of the United
+States, and just think: why now you can go in a Pullerman car clear'n
+acrost to San Francisco. My daughter lives in Oakland, just acrost a
+ferry from there.”
+
+“Well, then, there 's photographing,” said Captain Abel. “It doos seem
+amazing, as the minister said: you set down, and square yourself, and
+slick your hair, and stare stiddy into a funnel, and a man ducks his
+head under a covering, and pop! there you be, as natural as life,--if
+not more so. And when Uncle Capen was a young man, there wasn't nothing
+but portraits and minnytures, and these black-paper-and-scissors
+portraits,--what do they call 'em? Yes, sir, all that come in under his
+observation.”
+
+“Yes,” said one of the sons, “'tis wonderful; my wife and me was took
+setting on a settee in the Garding of Eden,--lions and tigers and other
+scriptural objects in the background.”
+
+“And don't forget the telegrapht,” said Maria; “don't forget that.”
+
+“Trew,” said Apollos, “that's another thing. I hed a message come once-t
+from my son that lives to Taunton. We was all so sca't and faint when
+we see it, that we did n't none of us dast to open it, and finally the
+feller that druv over with it hed to open it fur us.”
+
+“What was there in it?” said Mr. Small; “sickness?--death?”
+
+“No, he wanted his thick coat expressed up. But my wife didn't get over
+the shock for some time. Wonderful thing, that telegraph--here's a man
+standing a hundred miles off, like enough, and harpooning an idea chock
+right into your mind.”
+
+“Then that was a beautiful truth,” said Maria: “that father and
+Shakspeare would like enough be changed right round, in Heaven; I always
+said father wasn't appreciated here.”
+
+“Well,” said Apollos, “'tis always so; we don't begin to realize the
+value of a thing tell we lose it. Now that we sort o' stand and gaze at
+Uncle Capen at a fair distance, as it were, he looms. Ef he only hed n't
+kep' so quiet, always, about them 'ere wonders. A man really ought, in
+justice to himself, to blow his own horn--jest a little. But that was a
+grand discourse, wa'n't it, now?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Maria, “though I did feel nervous for the young man.
+Still, when you come to think what materials he had to make a sermon out
+of,--why, how could he help it! And yet, I doubt not he takes all the
+credit to himself.”
+
+“I should really have liked to have heard Father Cobb treat the
+subject,” said Mrs. Small, rising to go, and nodding to her husband. “'T
+was a grand theme. But 't was a real chance for the new minister. Such
+an opportunity doesn't happen not once in a lifetime.”
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, on his way home from the post-office,
+the minister stopped in at Dr. Hunter's office. The Doctor was reading a
+newspaper.
+
+Mr. Holt took a chair in silence.
+
+The Doctor laid down the paper and eyed him quizzically, and then slowly
+shook his head.
+
+“I don't know about you ministers,” he said. “I attended the funeral;
+I heard the biographical discourse; I understand it gave great
+satisfaction; I have reflected on it over night; and now, what I want to
+know is, what on earth 'there was in it about Uncle Capen.”
+
+The minister smiled.
+
+“I think,” he replied, “that all that I said about Uncle Capen was
+strictly true.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Minister's Great Opportunity, by
+Heman White Chaplin
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