He may shrink from the high places, but he is
the ideal man for them." As much of this sort of thing was said in the
public print, it is not impossible that the Rev. Rutherford Strathmore
was aware of it; but he had the good taste to ignore it, even in
conversation with his nearest friends, and the tact to carry himself
without self-consciousness or the appearance of humility with which a
smaller man would have shown that he knew that he was being praised.
Of friends he had a host well-nigh innumerable. He had an especial
liking for young men, and a great influence over them. He had the art
of arousing in them an emotional enthusiasm toward a higher life, so
that he had never lack of efficient helpers among the laymen in
whatever projects he undertook. He had also that invaluable attribute
of the priest, the gift of inspiring confidence and opening the heart.
He did not seem to seek confidences, yet they always came to him. Young
men in trouble, young women in woe, lads in the impressionable period
when sentimental experiences assume importance prodigious, youth of
both sexes bewildered between physical and religious sensations, the
sick and the poor, the ignorant and the cultivated, all found in him
that sympathy which opens the heart, and which, most of human
qualities, endears a man to his fellows.
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