University of Virginia Library

20. XX.
PAYING FOR HIS PROVENDER BY PRAYING.

We have no intention of making fun of
serious matters in telling the following
story; we merely relate a fact.

There is a rule at Oberlin College that
no student shall board at any house where
prayers are not regularly made each day.
A certain man fitted up a boarding-house
and filled it with boarders, but forgot, until
the eleventh hour, the prayer proviso. Not
being a praying man himself, he looked
around for one who was. At length he
found one—a meek young man from Trumbull
County—who agreed to pay for his
board in praying. For a while all went smoothly, but the boarding-master furnished
his table so poorly that the boarders began
to grumble and to leave, and the other
morning the praying boarder actually

“struck!” Something like the following
dialogue occurred at the table:

Landlord—Will you pray, Mr. Mild?

Mild—No, sir, I will not.

Landlord—Why not, Mr. Mild?

Mild—It don't pay, sir. I can't pray on
such victuals as these. And unless you
bind yourself in writing to set a better table
than you have for the last three weeks,
nary another prayer do you get out of me!

And that's the way the matter stood at
latest advices.