The Bishop droned on laboriously, mispronouncing words and repeating himself as if he were reading a catalogue of unfamiliar seeds.
"First church of Tecumseh--Brother Abram G.Tisdale!" There was no doubt about it! These were actually the words that had been uttered.

After all this outlay, all this lavish hospitality, all this sacrifice of time and patience in sitting through those sermons, to draw from the grab-bag nothing better than--a Tisdale! A hum of outraged astonishment--half groan, half wrathful snort bounded along from pew to pew throughout the body of the church.

An echo of it reached the Bishop, and so confused him that he haltingly repeated the obnoxious line.

Every local eye turned as by intuition to where the calamitous Tisdale sat, and fastened malignantly upon him.
Could anything be worse?
This Brother Tisdale was past fifty--a spindling, rickety, gaunt old man, with a long horse-like head and vacantly solemn face, who kept one or the other of his hands continually fumbling his bony jaw.

He had been withdrawn from routine service for a number of years, doing a little insurance canvassing on his own account, and also travelling for the Book Concern.