Finances were soon in a satisfactory condition, and church attendance reached the capacity of the building, but still the young pastor was not satisfied.

Pittsburg was a mining town, a young men's town.

A little city with saloons and brothels doing business on every hand.

His soul was on fire for his church to do a larger work and, with the hope of arousing his people, he conceived the idea of writing "That Printer of Udell's," planning to read the story, by installments, on special evenings of successive weeks, to his congregation.
Pittsburg was made the principal scene and the church of the story was the kind of church he wanted his Pittsburg charge to be.

The teachings set forth, through the preacher of the story, in the latter half of the book, are the identical things the author was preaching.