I gave an unusual amount of time and thought to that sermon, and at last evolved what I modestly believed to be a good one. I never write out a sermon in advance, but I did it this time, laboriously, and then memorized the effort. The night before the sermon was to be delivered Miss Anthony asked me about it, and when I realized how deeply interested she was I delivered it to her then and there as a rehearsal. It was very late, and I knew we would not be interrupted. As she listened her face grew longer and longer and her lips drooped at the corners. Her disappointment was so obvious that I had difficulty in finishing my recitation; but I finally got through it, though rather weakly toward the end, and waited to hear what she would say, hoping against hope that she had liked it better than she seemed to. But Susan B. Anthony was the frankest as well as the kindest of women. Resolutely she shook her head.
"It's no good, Anna," she said; firmly. "You'll have to do better. You've polished and repolished that sermon until there's no life left in it. It's dead. Besides, I don't care for your text."
"Then give me a text," I demanded, gloomily.
"I can't," said Aunt Susan.
I was tired and bitterly disappointed, and both conditions showed in my reply.
"Well," I asked, somberly, "if you can't even supply a text, how do you suppose I'm going to deliver a brand-new sermon at ten o'clock to-morrow morning?"
"Oh," declared Aunt Susan, blithely, "you'll find a text."
I suggested several, but she did not like them. At last I said, "I have it—'Let no man take thy crown.'"
"That's it!" exclaimed Miss Anthony. "Give us a good sermon on that text."
She went to her room to sleep the sleep of the just and the untroubled, but I tossed in my bed the rest of the night, planning the points of the new sermon. After I had delivered it the next morning I went to my father to assist him from the platform. He was trembling, and his eyes were full of tears. He seized my arm and pressed it.