the difference."

And to Nan, who was her other conscience, she said one day, when they
were discussing this subject,--

"I have been thinking a great deal about sermons lately. I wish I
could publish the result of my cogitation. I feel inclined to write a
pamphlet and entitle it 'Hints to the Clergy.' I think it would take
vastly."

It was Sunday afternoon, and they were sitting together on their
favorite boulder. Phillis had christened it her "thinking-stone."

"I never think to more purpose than when I am sitting here," she would
say.

Nan, who was looking out to sea rather dreamily, intent on her usual
vision, Dick, roused herself at this, and began to smile in a lofty
way.

"You think yourself very clever, Phillis, and so do I; but sermons are
hardly in your province, my dear."

Phillis shook her head gravely. She dissented from this view of the
case.

"Common sense is in every one's province," she persisted. "I am a
practical woman, and some of my hints would be valuable. Sermons are
failures, Nan. They go over people's heads like a flight of badly-shot
arrows. Does not Goulburn say that? Now and then one touches the mark.
When they are all let fly hither and thither and anyhow, the preacher
shuts up his book, and his hearers cease to yawn."

"Oh, Phillis, how absurd you are! Suppose Mr. Drummond were to hear
you?"

"I should have no objection. But, Nan, seriously, do you not notice
how formal and cut-and-dried most sermons are? They come round
regularly, like Sunday. People have to bear being preached at, and so
the unfortunate parson must hammer it out of his head somehow. He
picks out his text, writes out his composition, drags in his learning
by the ear, and delivers it in his best fashion; and people listen to
it politely, and the best behaved do not yawn."

"Phillis, you are positively irreverent! I am shocked at you!"

"On the contrary, I am very reverent. Well, in my 'Hints to the
Clergy' I would say, first, 'Never preach what you do not feel
yourself, or the current of electricity or sympathy, or whatever it is
that communicates between preacher and people, will be checked or
impeded. Do not preach out of the book: we can read that for
ourselves. Preach out of your own head and your own experience, just
as much as you can.' Bless you," continued Phillis, in a wise,
half-sad tone, "half the pulpits would be empty: we should get
sometimes no sermons at all!"

This was too much for Nan's