Early in the fifties a paper known as the _Virginia Telescope_, was started in West Columbia, ostensibly in the interest of the whole Church, but later developments proved that the object was to organize a Southern United Brethren Church, making the slavery question the basis of the separation. When the presiding elder, G. W. Statton, became aware of its purpose, he threw his official influence against its continuance, and succeeded, by the aid of others, in eliminating it as a disturbing factor. The reader will pardon me for taking up these early historical threads, woven long before my day as an itinerant, but I have done so with the view to preserving in permanent form interesting facts not generally known, and nowhere written into the history of the Church. CHAPTER IV. In March of 1878, the conference assembled in Grafton, with Bishop J. J. Glossbrenner as its presiding officer. At this session the brethren greatly surprised me by electing me one of the presiding elders. No thought of such a thing had ever entered my mind. I could not see the propriety of putting a young man, not yet twenty-seven, over men of age, ability, and experience, hence it was with no little diffidence that I accepted the West Columbia District, in the bounds of which I had already worked two years. The district contained only eleven charges, but these were widely scattered, embracing all or parts of Cabell, Mason, Jackson, Wood, Putnam, Kanawha, and Roane counties, and were as follows: Milton, Point Pleasant, Cross Creek, Thirteen, Jackson, Red House, Fair Plain, Sandy, New Haven, Wood, and Hartford City. Later, Walton was added. The salary assessed the district was $425; out of this I had to pay traveling expenses, provide a house to live in, and pay a hired girl. Under such conditions I could afford a house of only three rooms. I never believed in a preacher, or any one else, for that matter, living beyond his income. Debt is an awful devil for the itinerant to contend with, and should be avoided at all hazard. In all the years of my ministry I have never left a pastoral charge or district owing any one thereon a nickel. If a man is fit to be a preacher, debt will distract his mind and put a thorn in his pillow; it cannot be otherwise with a sensitive nature. God save our young men from the habit and curse of debt-making.