Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

50

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

tions from "What is the chief end of man?" to the fardistant conclusion, I received a prize Bible inscribed by
Mr. Marcus, the superintendent of the Reverend Doctor
Gardiner Spring's Sunday-school at the Brick Church at
Thirty-seventh Street. The venerable Doctor Spring,
who has been followed in that pulpit by so many notable
preachers, had occupied it for more than half a century
when I began to listen to his sermons. He was a lovable
pastor, overflowing with sympathetic grace and kindliness;
I never fidgeted in the pew when he was expounding the
divine word. His associate pastor for a time, the Reverend
Doctor William J. Hoge, was an able theologian of a more
ascetic type. When Doctor Hoge resigned, it was noised
about in the congregation that his departure from the
Brick Church was due to his strong inclination toward
the Confederate point of view. That was natural, for he
was a Virginian born. My father possessed a book
written by Doctor Hoge called " Blind Bartimeus, or the
Sightless Sinner," but I never read it.
During the latter part of the war we sat in the Broadway
Tabernacle, at Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, and
heard the patriotic discourses of the Reverend Doctor
Joseph P. Thompson, one of the most eloquent pulpit
orators of the time. I have the impression that our transfer from the Brick Church to the Tabernacle was decided
upon in order that I might attend the Bible class of young
Doctor Thomson, a physician born in Palestine, the son
of the missionary author of "The Land and the Book."
The exceeding interest and value of this gentleman's
teachings are held in grateful remembrance.

V
Barnum's Museum, of imperishable fame, is too firmly
established in the affections of my coevals of that generation and is too well documented historically to require