midnight
Let 's take one week out of the life of a regular minister . He starts in on Monday morning by having a woman call at the parsonage , a woman dressed poorly , and whose pained face makes his heart ache , and she tells him a tale of woe , and he goes to his wife and gets a basket of stuff out of the kitchen to give her , a kitchen not stocked any too well , and sends her home with immediate relief , and then goes out to hunt up the relief committee of his church to give the woman permanent relief . He comes back after a while and finds other callers , some to have him make a diagnosis of their souls , over which they are worrying , another to have him help get a son out of the police station , who used to belong to the Sunday-school , and one man wants him to preach a funeral sermon in the afternoon . He gets out of the police station in time for the funeral , and they make him go clear to the cemetery , and stop at the house with the mourners on the way back , and he gets a cold dinner that night , and has to call on several sick friends that evening , and one of them is so nearly gone that he remains with him to the last , and gets home at midnight . The other days of the week are the same , only more so , and in addition he has to run a prayer meeting , several society meetings , a sociable , settle a quarrel in the choir , and bring two members of the church together who have not spoken to each other for months , attend a ministers ' meeting and map out a plan of campaign against the old boy , run out into the country to preach a little for a neighboring preacher who is sick , or off on a vacation , attend a missionary meeting , marry a few couples , and prepare two sermons for Sunday forenoon and evening , sermons that are new , and on texts that have not been preached on before . One night in the week he can get on his slippers and sit in the library , and the other nights he is running from one place to another to make a lot of other people happier , and he has more sickness at home than any man in his congregation , and he works harder than the man who digs in the sewer , and half the time the people kick on his salary and wonder why he does n't do more , and say he looks so dressed up it ca n't be possible he has much to do , and when he gets worn down to the bone , and his cheeks are sunken , and his voice fails , and his step is not so active , they saw him off on to some country church that never did pay a minister enough to live on , and he never kicks , but just keeps on praying for them until he kicks the bucket , when he ought to give them a piece of his mind . How do you like it ? ''