one. No one but he knows what
she told him but he went forth a humble, tired, quiet man, filled to
the brim with a sudden belief in just life as it is lived by a few
hundred million humans. Five years later word came to Green Valley
that this same man was a much loved pastor somewhere in the mountains.
And Green Valley, perennially young, unthinking, joyous Green Valley,
laughed incredulously as a sweet-hearted but wrongly educated child
always laughs at a true fairy tale or a simple miracle.

"If I had the making and raising of ministers," Grandma was heard to
say, apropos of this clergyman, "about the first thing I'd set them to
learning would be to laugh, first at themselves and then at other
people. And as for this repentance and exhortation business I believe
it is worn out. Humans have gotten tired of that 'last call for the
paradise express.' They like this world and its life and they know
they could be pretty decent if somebody would only explain a few little
things to them. It isn't that they hate religion but they want to be
allowed to grow into it naturally and sanely. Religion getting ought
to be the quietest, happiest process, just pleasant neighboring like
and comparing of ideas, with every now and then a holy hush when men
and women have suddenly sensed some big beauty in life. All this noise
is unnecessary, for every living soul of us, barring idiots, repents
several times a day even though we don't admit it in so many words.
And as for righteous wrath--it's a good thing and I believe in it, but
like cayenne pepper it wants to be used sparingly and only at the right
place and on the right person. Any one would think to hear some
ministers talk that the Almighty was a combination of Theodore
Roosevelt, the Kaiser and a New York Police Commissioner working the
third degree.

"I wonder what the colleges can be thinking of, turning loose such
stale foolishness and old canned stuff on a mellow, sunny little home
town like Green Valley that's full of plain, blundering but
well-meaning, God-fearing people who work joyfully at their business of
living and turn up more religion when they plow a furrow or make over
the wedding dress for the baby than these ministers can dig up out of
all their musty books. I've prayed for all kinds of qualities in
ministers but I've come to the point where I ask nothing more of a
preacher than a laugh now and then, some horse sense and health.

"I used to think that o