Presently she leant over the front of the pulpit.
'Don't you tell papa, will you, Mr. Smith, if I tell you
something?' she said with a sudden impulse to make a confidence.
'Oh no, that I won't,' said he, staring up.
'Well, I write papa's sermons for him very often, and he preaches
them better than he does his own; and then afterwards he talks to
people and to me about what he said in his sermon to-day, and
forgets that I wrote it for him. Isn't it absurd?'
'How clever you must be!' said Stephen. 'I couldn't write a
sermon for the world.'
'Oh, it's easy enough,' she said, descending from the pulpit and
coming close to him to explain more vividly. 'You do it like
this. Did you ever play a game of forfeits called "When is it?
where is it? what is it?"'
'No, never.'
'Ah, that's a pity, because writing a sermon is very much like
playing that game. You take the text. You think, why is it? what
is it? and so on. You put that down under "Generally." Then you
proceed to the First, Secondly, and Thirdly. Papa won't have
Fourthlys--says they are all my eye. Then you have a final
Collectively, several pages of this being put in great black
brackets, writing opposite, "LEAVE THIS OUT IF THE FARMERS ARE
FALLING ASLEEP." Then comes your In Conclusion, then A Few Words
And I Have Done. Well, all this time you have put on the back of
each page, "KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN"--I mean,' she added, correcting
herself, 'that's how I do in papa's sermon-book, because otherwise
he gets louder and louder, till at last he shouts like a farmer up
a-field.
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