Now this scene was not an interview, but a revelation, and I felt that it “was good to be there.” But, as an engagement called us to go out together, we arose.
“I wish you could have seen more of my parish work,” he said, as we walked in the rain. He recurred to his favorite topic eagerly. “For that is my real life.”
THE DINING-ROOM.
“Sermons?” The word started him off.
“I have no patience with the idea that it takes six days of grinding to write a sermon. What nonsense! A sermon consists of about two thousand five hundred words. I take a cup of coffee before breakfast and write about six pages—that is, six hundred and fifty words. In the morning I dictate to my amanuensis one thousand five hundred words. I am intensely interested in the subject, and this takes only a quarter of an hour. In the afternoon I look it over and add five or six hundred words, and the sermon is done. In all, I haven’t put my hand for over two hours to paper.”
Although I have written a sermon or two myself, and had a different experience, I did not argue the point. I have a faint suspicion that it would take most people fifty years of experience to arrive at such a wonderful facility.
Power? Where did Doctor Hale get the strength to carry through his hundred duties?—editing—writing—aiding public work and public and private charities—correspondence—for he 300 is the busiest man in Boston, and his business increases upon him week by week in an appalling ratio.
“How on earth do you do it all? Where do you get the power? What is it?”