W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

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