XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH





CHAPTER I.

HOMILETIC.


Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say
or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not
by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have
wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want
any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again
at my writing-table, to write for you--with a strange feeling, however,
that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance,
by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to
myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I
cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your
presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.

But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the