ere ever _was_
one. "Think of your duty as a woman, or even as a mortal."

"I believe you're thinking of making a sermon on that," she retorted;
and he gave a sad, consenting laugh, as if it were quite true, though in
fact he never really preached a sermon on mere femininity or mere
mortality. His sermons were all very good, however; and that was another
thing that put her out of patience with his Rixonite parishioners--that
they should sit there Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, and
listen to his beautiful sermons, which ought to melt their hearts and
bring tears into their eyes, and not seem influenced by them any more
than if they were so many dry chips.

"But think how long they've had the gospel," he suggested, in a pensive
self-derision which she would not share.

"Well, one thing, Clarence," she summed up, "I'm not going to let you
throw yourself away on them; and unless you see some of the university
people in the congregation, I want you to use your old sermons from this
out. They'll never know the difference; and I'm going to make you take
one of the old sermons along every Sunday, so as to be prepared."

II.

One good trait of Mrs. Ewbert was that she never meant half she
said--she could not; but in this case there was more meaning than usual
in her saying. It really vexed her that the university families, who had
all received them so nicely, and who appreciated her husband's spiritual
and intellectual quality as fully as even she could wish, came some of
them so seldom, and some of them never, to hear him at the Rixonite
church. They ought, she said, to have been just suited by his preaching,
which inculcated with the peculiar grace of his gentle, poetic nature a
refinement of the mystical theology of the founder. The Rev. Adoniram
Rixon, who had seventy years before formulated his conception of the
religious life as a patient waiting upon the divine will, with a
constant reference of this world's mysteries and problems to the world
to come, had doubtless meant a more strenuous abeyance than Clarence
Ewbert was now preaching to a third generation of his followers. He had
doubtless meant them to be eager and alert in this patience, but the
version of his gospel which his latest apostle gave taught a species of
acquiescence which was foreign to the thoughts of the founder. He put as
great stress as could be asked upon the importance of a realizing faith
in the life to come, and an implicit trus