There was a growing sentiment in favor of licensing women to preach in the Methodist Church, and Dr. Peck, the presiding elder of the Big Rapids district, who was chief among the advocates of the movement, was anxious to present the first woman candidate for the ministry. Meeting the alert, ardent young student at the home of her teacher, Dr. Peck took pains to draw her into conversation. Soon she was talking freely, with eager animation, and her questioner was listening with interest, nodding approval now and then. Then an amazing thing happened. Dr. Peck looked at her smilingly and asked in an off-hand manner: "Would you like to preach the quarterly sermon at Ashton?" The young woman gasped; she stared at the good man in astonishment. Then she realized that he was speaking in entire seriousness. "Why," she stammered, "I can't preach a sermon!" "Have you ever tried?" he asked. "Never!" she began, and then as the picture of her childish self standing on the stump in the sunlit woods flashed upon her, "Never to human beings!" she amended. Dr. Peck was smiling again. "Well," he said, "the door is open. Enter or not, as you wish." After much serious counsel with Miss Foot and with her own soul, Anna Shaw determined to go in at the open door. For six weeks the preparation of the first sermon engaged most of her waking thoughts, and even in her dreams the text she had chosen sounded in her ears. It was, moreover, a time of no little anguish of spirit because of the consternation with which her family regarded her unusual "call." One might as well be guilty of crime, it appeared, as to be so forward and unwomanly. Finding it impossible to bring her to reason in any other way, they tried a bribe. After a solemn gathering of the clans, it was agreed that if she would give up this insane ambition to preach, they would send her to college--to Ann Arbor--and defray all her expenses. The thought of Ann Arbor was a sore temptation; but she realized that she could no more be faithless to the vision that had been with her from childhood than she could cease being herself. The momentous first sermon was the forerunner of many others in different places, and when at the conference the members were asked to vote whether she should be licensed as a local preacher, the majority of the ministers raised both hands! She was, however, still regarded as the black sheep of the family, and it was with a heavy spirit that she plodded on day by day with her studies. Surely nobody was ever more in need of a friendly word than was Anna Shaw at the time that Mary A. Livermore came to lecture in Big Rapids. At the close of the meeting she was among those gathered in a circle about the distinguished speaker, when some one pointed her out, remarking that "there was a young person who wanted to preach in spite of the opposition and entreaties of all her friends."