Penloe always answered all such communications, but as for accepting one
of them it was out of the question; for he knew it was not his field of
labor, and if the salary had been a hundred thousand dollars a year, it
would have been no temptation or an inducement to him to accept the
offer. For money, name and fame touched him not; and nothing could
induce him to leave his path of labor for the sake of going into some
new field of work which only held out large material rewards. He also
received many offers from the owners of papers and magazines, asking him
to write his views. The New York _Monthly Magazine_ offered him one
thousand dollars for an eight-page article on the sex question; provided
he would not write on the subject for any other magazine or paper.
Penloe accepted the offer because he considered that was the best
channel to communicate to the world his views on the sex question. Its
readers were of a class that could comprehend the subject in the spirit
in which it was offered. And as for the thousand dollars Penloe had a
sacred purpose he wished to use that money for. A man wrote to Penloe
offering him forty thousand dollars if he would consent to lecture for
one year in all the large cities in the United States. The man told a
friend of his, he was sure after paying Penloe his forty thousand
dollars and all other expenses, he would clear about sixty thousand
dollars himself.
How true it is that a prophet is not without honor, save in his own
country. For Orangeville was the last place to feel the Penloe wave
which swept over all the country. At last the people of Orangeville
reading so much about him in their papers and magazines, began to think
he was something more than a crank, that they must have a great man
amongst them, or else he would never have received such big offers of
money for his services as the papers stated he had, and there would not
have been so much written about him if he was of no account.
Quite a change had come over the people in Roseland concerning Penloe,
and they began to feel differently towards him since his wave of
popularity had swept over the country. Even Stella's aunt had
experienced a change of heart towards him, for she was heard to say,
"People's ideas are changing now in regard to the sex question. They
look at the subject so differently now from what they did when I was a
girl. I did not think Penloe was such a smart man as the papers say he
is. He must be, or else he never would have received an offer of forty
thousand dollars to lecture for one year."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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