Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1891 — False Teeth Divided a Church. [ARTICLE]

False Teeth Divided a Church.

At every meeting of the Congregational Sunday-school Superintendents some one tells a good story in illustration of some point which he wishes to bring out. The meeting last night in Berkely Temple took up again the topic that was left unfinished at the laet monthly meeting: “What Can the Sunday-school Learn fiom the Public School?” This subject gradually led up to the “Choice, Tenure, and Change of Teachers in the Sundayschool,” in which Mr. C. W. Carter spoke at length. His remarkes led to a very funny story by Mr. E. 0. Bullock. Mr. Carter spoke of the necessity of having good teachers as something which everyone admitted, but he recognized the fact that to get the best teachers was an exceedingly difficult thing. To change teachers often was a great injury to a school, and he thought, therefore, that it was often better to keep a teacher who was not strictly first-class rather than risk the alternative and hurt the teacher’s feelings deeply besides. Then Mr. Bullock arose. “There was once a country parish,” he said, “where the choir was led for a very long time by the wife of one of the deacons. For ten years she saDg acceptably to the people, and for several years more she did not siDg acceptably. Then it was made worse by her getting a set of false teeth. These teeth came out one day when she was singing, and the deacon’s wife didn’t like it. “The minister and the congregation didn’t like it, either. But the former was like Bro. Carter, and said we will wait a while. It would be too bad to hurt the feelings of the deacon’s wife. So he waited. The teeth came out a good many times during the next year or so, but the deacon’s wife still sung. When her teeth came out of course the congregation laughed. Finally the minister was obliged to do something. He decreed that if the deacon’s wife was to sing in the choir the congregation should stand back to the choir. “Some of the congregation complied, some didn’t. That created a division in the church. Neither side would yield an inch, and to-day there are two churches where there was then only one, all because the minister was afraid of hurting tho feelings of the deacon’s wife.”— Boston Herald. Signor Crispi’s fall, like Prince Bismarck’s, seems to have been primarily due to the disease known colloquially as big head. He got so that the slightest criticism affected him as a sort of sacrilege, and the Italian Chamber could no more stand this than the German Kaiser could. Sheet iron is rolled so thin at the Pittsburgh iron mills that 12,0J0 sheets are required to make a single inch in thickness. Light shines as readily through one of these sheets as it does through ordinary tissue paper.