W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
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profitable pastime and erudition. I, of course, went to their meetings and heard them deliver their speeches,<br />
alternately discussing either side of the controverted question. As I listened to them, I found myself<br />
soliloquizing: “I should like to do that,” and I communicated to them my desire to be a participant. There was<br />
not a solitary boy in it. The participants were local preachers, civil officers, and other mature men. They readily<br />
threw open the door for us boys, and some of us, of whom I was decidedly the smallest and youngest, proceeded<br />
to take our places among the speakers. In the schools they never had any exercises of that kind in that country,<br />
so this was my first. I was charmed with it, becoming more and more enamored and really carried away by a<br />
delightful, growing enthusiasm for the forensic discussion. As the years rolled along, all the old members<br />
dropped out, leaving us boys to make what we would of the enterprise. We continued it, holding our meetings<br />
every Saturday night, till at twenty I left home to attend a grammar school sixty miles distant. God made this<br />
forensic society a most profitable school for me during those years which elapsed after I had learned about all I<br />
could in the common schools of that country.<br />
During that time a mathematician came into that community and opened a select school in which nothing was<br />
taught but arithmetic. Fortunately he was very thorough, seeming to have it all in his memory, so that with great<br />
readiness he was prepared to solve all the problems and elucidate them beautifully. This latter he did on the<br />
black board, which had never been used in the common schools there. The name of this adept arithmetician was<br />
Obadiah Denham, a most excellent gentleman, whom God made a great blessing to me educationally, under<br />
whose instruction I was enabled to master the arithmetic, so that I could teach it from beginning to end. With<br />
this progress in the literary course, I conceived the idea of teaching school, not only for my own proficiency and<br />
erudition, but especially in order that I might defray my expenses while prosecuting a thorough collegiate<br />
education which was the grand desideratum of my juvenile spirit. I had realized my call to preach the Gospel<br />
from my childhood, but, knowing my incompetency, was deeply humiliated at the thought of the undertaking,<br />
and therefore I was anxious for every auxiliary aid. For that reason I put out to hunt me a school to teach, but I<br />
everywhere met nothing but refusal and rebuff. They said that they knew that I was educationally more<br />
competent than any of the teachers who had served them, but that I just possibly could not make the children<br />
mind me. In that country teachers were all mature men, and generally old. They thought the management of<br />
children the most important consideration and that they would not mind a young person. In my case, although I<br />
was twenty years old, I only weighed ninety-three pounds and had no more beard than a little lassie and my face<br />
was rosy like that of a child. Therefore they everywhere rejected me outright. So all the schools about the<br />
country had begun and I was left out. Ere long I found an empty schoolhouse, made inquiry for the trustees and<br />
waited on them. They responded, like all the balance, that I could not manage the children, because I looked just<br />
like a child myself. Then I asked them, as the house was empty, to let me just begin on my own responsibility,<br />
relieving them of all obligation to pay or help in any way. To this they consented, therefore gathering up a few<br />
poor children I began. So successful was the work that the news went out and students began to come in from all<br />
directions, and so continued until I not only had all I could teach, but found it necessary to employ an assistant.<br />
When I wound up, the trustees came and employed me to teach their school the ensuing year. After that I never<br />
in my life had any more trouble to get a school, but applications crowded on me, more than I knew what to do<br />
with.<br />
You can appropriate this to yourself, as it clearly illustrates the possibility of your success on the same line. My<br />
collegiate education occupied six years and cost me one thousand dollars, every cent of which I made by<br />
teaching. As I looked like a little boy those times, my weight not exceeding one hundred pounds, I realized the<br />
necessity of paying for my education by mental rather than manual labor, as the latter in that country generally<br />
demanded so much more physical strength than I commanded.<br />
Following that educational trend, I have somewhat neglected the spiritual in this biographical narrative. I had<br />
been brought into the Church in my infancy by the dedication of baptism, and, as I believe, really converted at<br />
the age of about three years, although afterward inadvertently, through childish weakness, lapsing and getting<br />
restored a time or two. This restoration was not by any special ministerial effort, as all the preachers and<br />
Christians in those days thought children had to wait until adultage before they could be converted to God. Even<br />
though I had become a confirmed backslider, though keeping the moral law diligently and living above criticism<br />
in a religious sense, yet every stirring sermon, especially those I heard my father and other Methodist and