CHAPTER VIII.

_THE MEETING AND ITS MISSIONARY WORK_.


The Methodist church in the village is doing now, as it has always
done, a good and noble work for Christianity and the cause of public
morals; but it has not escaped the trials which are permitted
sometimes to afflict the Church militant. Years ago, when the
congregation was first organized, it erected a small but very
pretty frame meeting-house. In the course of time the people became
dissatisfied with the location of the house of worship; and as they
had a good offer for the site, they sold it and bought a better one in
another quarter. Then they put rollers under the building, and as soon
as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot began to build a
dwelling-house on the site. It was slow work pushing the church along
the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title
of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled. The
next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another
site, but nobody had one to sell; and on the following morning the
supervisors got an order from the court requiring that meeting-house
to be removed from the public street within twenty-four hours.

The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley
to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until
they could look around. But Brindley belonged to another denomination,