Unique Appeal To Raise Funds

It is Being Sent Out by the Rev. W. L. Tedrow

THE TRINITY LUTHERANS

Have a Mortgage Indebtedness and the Pastor is Making Efforts to Pay It

The following unique appeal for the purpose of raising funds to pay off the mortgage indebtedness of Trinity English Lutheran church is being sent out by the pastor of the church, the Rev. W. L. Tedrow:

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 7-1, 1902

Kind Friend: - As I write this, I am seated at my quarter-sawed oak desk in the northeast quarter of the parsonage, which is situated on the two western quarters of the lot upon which the above named church stands. It is now a quarter past ten in the morning, and so in the second quarter of the day, which is the 14th day of April, and so in the second quarter of the month, and also in the second quarter of the year, which belongs to the first quarter of the century. If I am not mistaken the moon is also now in the second quarter, perhaps near the third quarter, and by the time you receive this it will probably have reached the fourth quarter. You might infer from this that I am looking for quarters, and your inference is correct. You see it is just like this. We have, as a church, been making a tremendous effort to free our building from debt. We have by hard, self-denying effort, paid off about three-quarters of the mortgage indebtedness upon the church building, and now to meet the last quarter of it, we are forced to call upon a few of our chosen friends to join us in the enterprise. Happiness always follows a good act, and I therefore know that you will thank me for giving you this opportunity to do good. To save inconvenience, and to further your Joy in giving I enclose a card, which has been perforated to receive coin. Place a quarter in each hole and see how snugly it fits. A five dollar gold piece will not quite fill it, and a ten might perhaps be crowded into it, but they should only be used in case no silver is at hand. Some people say the silver question is dead, if dead it ought to be buried. So just press a silver quarter into each of the holes and then seal the sepulchre by pasting the cover down snugly about the coin, making it as secure as you can, and then sign your name, and mail to me, and it will not be many days, until the seal will be broken, and the dead will come forth. It will will live again and help to bury the other fellow, I mean the last quarter of the mortgage, and bury it so deep too that no resurrection voice will ever reach it.

On the card, which has been perforated to receive the coin, the following answer to the appeal is printed: "Kind Friend: - Your irresistible appeal has been received and could meet with naught but a ready response, and so I return to you herewith the card filled with quarters.

"As you suggested, I have placed he quarters in the holes, which is reversing the natural order of things it being more usual to find quarters with holes than holes with quarters in them. I sincerely hope that you have received enough to bury the last quarter of the mortgage on your church so deep in a hole that it will never again rise to disturb you."