Never in the character of a Chinaman was there the trait of commercial
fraud that assailed our American cities in 1879. It got into our food
finally--the very bread we ate was proven to be an adulteration of
impure stuff. What an extravagance of imagination had crept into our
daily life! We pretended even to eat what we knew we were not eating.
Except for the reminder which old books written in byegone simpler days
gave us, we should have insisted that the world should believe us if we
said black was white. Still, among us there were some who were genuine,
but they seemed to be passing away. It was in this year that the oldest
author in America died, Richard Henry Dana. He was born in 1788, when
literature in this country was just beginning. His death stirred the
tenderest emotions. Authorship was a new thing in America when Mr. Dana
began to write, and it required endurance and persistence. The
atmosphere was chilling to literature then, there was little applause
for poetic or literary skill. There were no encouragements when
Washington Irving wrote as "Knickerbocker," when Richard Henry Dana
wrote "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," and "The Dying Raven." There was
something cracking in his wit, exalted in his culture. He was so gentle
in his conversation, so pure in his life, it was hard to spare him. He
seemed like a man who had never been forced into the battle of the
world, he was so unscarred and hallowed.

It was just about this time that our Tabernacle in Brooklyn became the
storm centre of a law-suit which threatened to undermine us. It was
based upon a theory, a technicality of law, which declared that the
subscriptions of married women were not legal subscriptions. Our
attorneys were Mr. Freeman and Judge Tenney. Theirs was a battle for God
and the Church. There were only two sides to the case. Those against the
Church and those with the Church. In the preceding eight years, whether