Excerpt from Life-Story of Rev. Davis Wasgatt Clark, D.D: Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Compiled From Original Sources To write the biography of a recently deceased person is always a difficult and delicate task. Time, the great arbiter and the only reliable judge of what ought to be remembered or forgotten, has not yet made his decisions. The newly gathered fruits are yet crude, nor can it be determined which will mellow into richness and which will decay in the process. It seems to be conceded that none but a friendly hand should compose such a work, and yet that very friendship may inter fere with the cool and unprejudiced action of the writer. But when not only the individual in his actions and character is made the theme of disquisition, but the whole field of his relations are contemplated, and the related things in their connection with the subject of the memoir, the difficulty becomes greater in pr0portion.to the greatness of the theme. Nearly all subjects of public interest have their partisan aspects, and upon any contemporary subject all who may be sufficiently interested tr read a book relating to it may be supposed to belong to one or the other party. To discuss to the satisfaction of all parties the questions that must come under notice in such a work is quite impossible. If the writer pursues only the truth, without fear or favor, even were he infallible in his determinations, he can satisfy only those with whom he may agree. If he com promises the existing differences - the favorite method with some - he would probably offend all, and at the same time vio late truth and right, for it is far from being the case that these always lie midway between extremes. Such are some of the difficulties to be encountered in such a work as this before us. How well the writer has managed them will be seen by a peru sal of the volume itself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.