The best seat at the table, and the best dishes upon it, a minister may get used to. A Methodist minister certainly ought to be ready to accept the best horse, for has not much of his success come from his gifts and graces in that favorite department of human enjoyment? He has abolished the parson's jog, which was as well known as the parson's coat, and made the "Gid-up" of Holmes's "One-horse Shay" as dusty a nothing as the shay itself. When the first itinerants drove into the country village on their smooth, fleet steeds, the eyes of the loafers about tavern and store were opened very wide. "Who is this feller who rides such a handsome critter?" was the general inquiry. And when they found he was a preacher, their amazement grew like Fort Garry wheat in July. They had never seen it after this fashion. They would go and hear the minister, whose horse could beat the fastest racer of the Corners, and they did go and hear, and found he could preach as well as he could ride. The way to a man's heart is through a horse, as those fathers found.
I ought, too, to have been inspired by modern examples. I bethought me of that presiding elder way down East, whose little beast used to leave all meaner things behind; and who (the man, not the mare) was accustomed to say to all gayly-dressed horsemen, who rode up in buckskin gloves, shiny hat, horse and harness and all, as if to leave their dust upon his sorry team, ere he quickly passed out of their sight, "I beg pardon, sir, but I treat all alike."
Alas! that this dear, delightful brother so suddenly fled to the world above. Riding into his yard from his wide circuit, struck there with death, disembarking, and pausing by this companion of many a long journey, he drops suddenly, never to rise again. The Pale Horse and its paler rider bear him swiftly away. Nay, the flaming chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof sweep him heavenward.
I might also have bethought me of that other presiding elder in the Far West who, when his black ponies in an unwashed buggy slid by a costly, stately team, newly bought and burnished,
