'
`` `You'll never get it,' he said. `He's not that
sort of a man. He's not even a church man!'
``But I just went quietly on with the work,
without answering, and after quite a while he
left; but he called back, as he went off, `Well, if
he does give you that hundred dollars, come to
me and I'll give you another hundred.' ''
Conwell smiles in genial reminiscence and without
any apparent sense that he is telling of a great
personal triumph, and goes on:
``Those two men both paid the money, and of
course the church people themselves, who at first
had not quite understood that I could be in earnest,
joined in and helped, with work and money,
and as, while the new church was building, it was
peculiarly important to get and keep the congregation
together, and as they had ceased to have
a minister of their own, I used to run out from
Boston and preach for them, in a room we hired.
``And it was there in Lexington, in 1879, that
I determined to become a minister. I had a good
law practice, but I determined to give it up. For
many years I had felt more or less of a call to
the ministry, and here at length was the definite
time to begin.
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