“I think so,” replied the minister.
“I’m awfully obliged to you, Mr. Driggs,” the little girl said. “I wish I might do something for you in return.”
“Help me with my sermon, perhaps?” he asked, smiling.
“I would if I could, Mr. Driggs.” Carolyn May was very earnest.
“Well, now, Carolyn May, how would you go about writing a sermon, if you had one to write?”
“Oh, Mr. Driggs!” exclaimed the little girl, clasping her hands. “I know just how I’d do it.”
“You do? Tell me how, then, my dear,” he returned, smiling. “Perhaps you have an inspiration for writing sermons that I have never yet found.”
“Why, Mr. Driggs, I’d try to write every word so’s to make folks that heard it happier. That’s what I’d do. I’d make ’em look up and see the sunshine and the sky—and the mountains, ’way off yonder—so they’d see nothing but bright things and breathe only good air and hear birds sing—Oh, dear me, that—that is the way I’d write a sermon.”
The clergyman’s face had grown grave as he listened to her, but he kissed her warmly as he thanked her and bade her good-bye. When she had gone from the study he read again the text written at the top of the first sheet of sermon paper. It was taken from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah.
“‘To write every word so’s to make folks that heard it happier,’” he murmured as he crumpled the sheet of paper in his hand and dropped it in the waste-basket.