But Methodist--no! People who don't belong won't come near the Methodist church here so long as there's any other place with a roof on it to go to.Give a dog a bad name, you know.Well, the Methodists here have got a bad name;and if you could preach like Henry Ward Beecher himself you wouldn't change it, or get folks to come and hear you.""I see what you mean," Theron responded."I'm not particularly surprised myself that Octavius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual stimulation.
I myself leave that pulpit more often than otherwise feeling like a wet rag--utterly limp and discouraged.
But, if you don't mind my speaking of it, YOU don't belong, and yet YOU come."It was evident that the lawyer did not mind.He spoke freely in reply."Oh, yes, I've got into the habit of it.
I began going when I first came here, and--and so it grew to be natural for me to go.Then, of course, being the only lawyer you have, a considerable amount of my business is mixed up in one way or another with your membership;you see those are really the things which settle a man in a rut, and keep him there.""I suppose your people were Methodists," said Theron, to fill in the pause, "and that is how you originally started with us."Levi Gorringe shook his head.He leaned back, half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together, and almost smiled as if something in retrospect pleased and moved him.
"No," he said; "I went to the church first to see a girl who used to go there.It was long before your time.
All her family moved away years ago.You wouldn't know any of them.I was younger then, and I didn't know as much as Ido now.I worshipped the very ground that girl walked on, and like a fool I never gave her so much as a hint of it.
Looking back now, I can see that I might have had her if I'd asked her.But I went instead and sat around and looked at her at church and Sunday-school and prayer-meetings Thursday nights, and class-meetings after the sermon.