Mr. Glidden had goaded the rector of St. Simeon's to other things which Emmy Lou, nearing nine years, had heard discussed at home.
"Popular heads to my sermons for the newspapers and the bulletin board?" it was reported that Dr. Angell had said indignantly. "Who but Glidden wants notices in the papers or a bulletin board either? For forty years I have sedulously refrained from being popular, and I'll not begin it now."
But he came to it, popular heads being furnished by him weekly, in a dazed pother at finding himself doing it, but still doing it.
"Prizes to encourage the Sunday school?" so report said his comment was to this last proposition. "Pay the children of my church for doing their duty?"
But the report also said that he calmed down on grasping that the proposition centered about texts.
When Dr. Angell met the little people of his flock in the company of their elders he addressed them much after the same fashion. "A big girl, now!" or "Quite a little man!" he would say. "Old enough to be coming to church every Sunday and profiting by service and sermon."
"Sermon," said he, on occasion to a little boy who said he didn't like sermons. "The sooner you realize and profit by the knowledge that life is one unending sermon, sirrah, the better for you."
Dr. Angell had gathered his own sermons into a book, as Aunt Cordelia told proudly to strangers, a stout volume bound in cloth, with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays stamped on the cover, entitled "Rays from the Sun of Righteousness."
And now, his attention caught and held by the word "text," since from his viewpoint to every sermon its text, and possibly to every text its sermon, he was offering a rector's prize for a year's quiver of pink tickets, these being the visible show of as many correctly recited texts.
"Will you have Emmy Lou try?" Aunt Louise said to Aunt Cordelia. "We in the Sunday school feel we should do all we can to support Mr. Glidden."