THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 7 



must necessarily start from small beginnings, our 

 Order is all right. Its foundation was laid on solid 

 nothing the rock of poverty and there is no 

 harder material." At times the persistent secre- 

 tary found himself unable even to buy postage for 

 his circular letters. His friends at Washington be- 

 gan to lose interest in the work of an order with 

 a treasury "so empty that a five-cent stamp would 

 need an introduction before it would feel at home 

 in it." Their only letters to Kelley during this try- 

 ing time were written to remind him of bills owed 

 by the order. The total debt was not more than 

 $150, yet neither the Washington members nor 

 Kelley could find funds to liquidate it. "My dear 

 brother," wrote Kelley to Ireland, "you must not 

 swear when the printer comes in. . . . When they 

 come in to * dun ' ask them to take a seat; light your 

 pipe; lean back in a chair, and suggest to them that 

 some plan be adopted to bring in ten or twenty 

 members, and thus furnish funds to pay their bills." 

 A note of $39, in the hands of one Mr. Bean, caused 

 the members in Washington further embarrass- 

 ment at this time and occasioned a gleam of humor 

 in one of Kelley 's letters. Bean's calling on the 

 men at Washington, he wrote, at least reminded 

 them of the absentee, and to be cursed by an old 



