This seemed to them a
good deal like a joke, but they answered in perfect
earnestness that they would be quite willing to
do the doubling as soon as he did the doubling,
and in less than a year the salary was doubled
accordingly.
I asked him if he had found it hard to give up
the lucrative law for a poor ministry, and his
reply gave a delightful impression of his capacity
for humorous insight into human nature, for he
said, with a genial twinkle:
``Oh yes, it was a wrench; but there is a sort
of romance of self-sacrifice, you know. I rather
suppose the old-time martyrs rather enjoyed themselves
in being martyrs!''
Conwell did not stay very long in Lexington.
A struggling little church in Philadelphia heard
of what he was doing, and so an old deacon went
up to see and hear him, and an invitation was
given; and as the Lexington church seemed to
be prosperously on its feet, and the needs of the
Philadelphia body keenly appealed to Conwell's
imagination, a change was made, and at a salary
of eight hundred dollars a year he went, in 1882,
to the little struggling Philadelphia congregation,
and of that congregation he is still pastor--only,
it ceased to be a struggling congregation a great
many years ago! And long ago it began paying
him more thousands every year than at first it
gave him hundreds.
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