This was the turning of the tide for Dr. Gowdy. From this time on, things
began to run his way once more. The ministerial body, at its next
meeting, reconsidered its resolution of censure; surely their brother had
been sorely tried. The threatened suit of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. was
quashed by the Doctor's own dauntless bearing. The _Hourglass_ agreed to
open its columns to him, though but for a short synopsis and without
remuneration--so that he had to go into his own pocket for the Foreign
Missions. And finally, the students at the Academy refused to hear of his
withdrawal as trustee. They met; they protested; they resolved; they
clamoured. "We want our Gowdy back! we want our Gowdy back!"--such was
their cry. Their cry was heard; they got their Gowdy back. When next he
addressed them (it was only on Ephesian Antiquities--a safe subject)
their cry was heard again--heard, possibly, in the interior of the next
State. It was the proudest moment of the Doctor's public life.
Jared Stiles's "Golden Autumn," handled and framed in his usual manner,
and "valued at" ten thousand dollars--none of Jared's larger pieces now
falls below that figure--will soon go trailing, exhibitionwise, through
the halls of the Eastern seaboard. But it is an error to assert that the
name of the painting was suggested by the Rev. William S. Gowdy. No; he
still stubbornly ranges all this work, and indeed all similar work in any
other field of art, under the generic name of the Squash.
* * * * *