ANNA HO WABD SHAW 443 gan to show themselves very soon and her eloquence and na- tive ability attracted the attention of the presiding elder of the district conference of the Methodist Church of which she be- came, upon her conversion, a member. The elder startled and frightened her one day by telling her that he wanted her to preach the conference sermon in his district. She told him she never had preached and never could. He was ambitious for her and wished her to get started in this field as yet almost untried by women. She prayed over it all night long and in the morning answered that she would do it, and that is how in 1873 Anna Howard Shaw decided to work and study to become a minister. She felt timid after having promised to preach and did not tell any one until two or three days before the time, and then she told her sister, who was shocked and dis- tressed and begged her not to do it, as she felt that she was disgradng herself. All of tiie members of her family disapproved of her course and begged her to change her mind and not dishonor them. It was a dreadful feeling to have to do what she believed to be right, while all of her family were against her, and it made the ordeal a very hard one. When she did preach, she remembers, she trembled so that the oil shook in the lamps on the desk. The presiding elder continued to push her forward because he wished to have the credit of ordaining the first woman preach- er in the Methodist Church, and finally the time came when she must preach in her home town. This was the hardest place of all, because before her conversion she had been a ring- leader among the young people in all sorts of frolic and mis- chief, and they could not believe that she was in earnest. No member of her family attended church on the day that she preached in her home town. After she had preached in each of the thirty-two districts over which the elder presided she applied for a preacher's license. Every minister of the thirty- two present voted that she should have a license to preach, and this was renewed every year for eight years. She then attended a Methodist College, where, being a li- censed preacher, she had free tuition. Before she entered, the president engaged her in a long conversation and at its close
