man preached to her feeling that with the criticism would come
kindliness and the sort of mother comfort that Grandma somehow knew how
to give to the meanest and most blundering of creatures. Indeed, it
was the least successful of Green Valley's ministers who had designated
Grandma's seat as Inspiration Corner. And then had in a final burst of
wrath told Green Valley that like Sodom and Gomorrah it was doomed,
that no mere man preacher could save it, that its only hope lay in
Grandma Wentworth, who alone understood its miserable, petty orneriness.

He meant to leave town a sputtering, raging man, that minister,--full
of what he called righteous wrath. But he went to say good-by to
Grandma and experienced a change of heart.

He began his farewell by unburdening his heart and soul of all the
ponderous doctrines that sunny, joyful Green Valley had refused to
listen to. He spoke earnestly of the world's terrible need of
salvation, the fearful necessity for haste and wholesale repentance and
the awful menace of God's wrath. And the fact that he was a man
entering his forties instead of his thirties made matters worse.

But Grandma listened patiently and when he was emptied of all his
sorrows and worriments she took him out into her herb-garden, seated
him where he could see the sunset hills and then she preached a
marvellous sermon to just this one man alone. 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