really a lovely sermon this morning. It is beautiful to be able to help
a whole congregation like that."

"Yes," chimed in Miss Vardell, Sadie's sweet senior, "it was perfectly
fascinating. I shall never forget it as long as I live."

"I really think you will have to let us speak our mind," added their
mother. "Your Geneva gown was so becoming; I do so wish our Southern
ministers would adopt it. And the sermon was perfect. I especially
admired the way it seemed to grow out of the text; they seemed to grow
together like a vine twining around a tree."

I endured this tender pelting with the best grace I could command,
though this was the first time I had ever been the centre of such a
hosannah thunder-storm. The tribute to the kinship of text and sermon,
however, was really very pleasing to me. Just at this juncture, when a
new batch of compliments was about to be produced, smoking hot, an aged
aunt, the prisoner of years, ventured an enquiry.

"I wish I could have been there--but I am far past that," she said.
"What was the text, Sadie?"

Sadie flew into the chamber of her memory to catch it before it should
escape. But the sudden invasion had evidently alarmed it, for it had
gone. She silently pursued it into space, but returned empty-handed.

"That's strange," she faltered; "it was a lovely text," she added, by
way of consolation. "But it's gone; I was so taken up with the sermon
that I must have failed to remember the text," she concluded, false to
her first love, but faithful to her guest.

"Well, Josie," said the still unenlightened aunt, "I will have to look
to you. You will tell me what it was."

Josie joined in the chase, but their prey had had a noble start and was
now far beyond them.

"It was in the New Testament, I think," said Josie, pleased with this
pledge of accuracy, and satisfied that she had outrun her sister--"and
it was tolerably long." This was said with the air of one who had almost
identified it and might justly leave the rest to the imagination. "I
reckon I could find it if I had a Bible," she added hopefully.

No Bible was produced, for that would have been taking an unfair
advantage of the fugitive; but the eulogists began their mental search
in unison, quoting various fragments of my morning prayer at family
worship, which they carefully retained as witnesses. After they had
ransacked every mental corridor in vain they acknowledged the
fruitlessness of the quest, and I myself told