"No, you can't!" retorted William. "Not unless the heathens get faith enough to believe, and faith is a thing you cannot send out through the mails as if it was sample packages of patent medicine!" Such talk as that sent him back to the circuits, where there were the same old fashions in sleeves and headgear for women, and where he could take his text from Jonah's gourd if he chose, without exciting the higher critical faculties of his congregation. It was harder on us in some ways. I never could understand why the old preachers who have got rheumatism in their knees, and maybe lumbago besides, should be sent back to the exposure of all weathers on the circuits, while the young ones with plenty of oil in their joints fatten in the more comfortable charges. And I am not the one to say with resignation that it is "all right." Still, the good God evens things up in wonderful ways. William got so stiff in his legs toward the last that he had to stand up to pray; but we had come back to the region of simplicities, where there were just three elements to consider and put together in his sermons--Man, his field and his God, and they were only separated by a little grass, a few stars and the creation light and darkness of days and nights. When a man gets as near home as that he does not mind the pains in his mere body. At least William never complained. Looking back, I think he was at his best about the time he went back to the real circuit itinerancy. He had the glory of presence. Faith, I think, gave him a halo. You could not see it, but you could feel it, and in this connection I recall an illustration of the difference between such a halo and the "aura" we hear so much about these days from people who think they are interested in psychic phenomena, but who are really psychic epileptics. We were on a circuit which included a summer resort, and the varieties of diseases among patients in a sanitarium are as nothing compared to the mental, moral, spiritual and physical disorders to be found among the class who frequent "springs." To this place came a "New Thoughter" who was always in a spiritual sweat about her "astral shape." She manifested a condescending interest in the Sunday services at our church, which finally led her to call on William one afternoon at the parsonage. She was a dingy little blonde, with a tight forehead and a thin nose. William was sitting alone in the peace of his spirit behind the morning-glory vines on the front porch. Providence had wisely removed me to the sewing-machine inside the adjoining room.