se moods.

We were stationed that year at Celestial Bells, a place where, as I
have already intimated, the people had some kind of happy beam in their
eye. They were not only willing to be Christians, they were determined
to be. But they were equally determined to enjoy every other good
thing they saw in sight. This led to many social occasions, afternoon
teas, receptions, innocent entertainments, to no end of visiting and to
a fashionableness in everybody's appearance that was scandalously
fascinating to me.

Now and then I have heard some stupid stranger refer to Celestial Bells
as an ugly little town, but in my memory it is spread forever in the
sun, sweetly shining like a flower-garden wing of Paradise. It was
there after so many years that I came in contact again with simple
human gayety, with women prettily gowned, with the charming clatter of
light conversation and within the sound of music that was not always
hymnal. I do not say, mind you, that I did not listen always
reverently and gratefully to William's higher talk, nor that I have
ever ceased to enjoy good church music, but I am confessing that, in
spite of long training in experience-meeting monologues and organ
tunes, I was still ecstatically capable of this other kind of delight.

As the Minister's Wife I was asked everywhere. In all well-bred
communities the preacher's wife is given the free moral agent's
opportunity to draw her own line between the world and the church. If
she refuses a series of invitations to teas and clubs and receptions,
it is understood that she is not of the world, will have none of it,
and she is left to pursue her pious way to just the church services and
missionary meetings. But I refused to draw the spiritual line between
tea parties and the bible-class study evening. I accepted every
invitation with alacrity. There was nothing radically wrong, I
believe, with my heavenly mind, it simply extended further down and
around about than that of some others in my position.

One circumstance only interfered with my pleasures. This was the
curious sag and limpness, and color and style of my clothes. It is no
mystery to me why dress fashions for women connected with the
itinerancy tend to mourning shades. When you put the world out of your
life, you put the sweet vanity of color out. You eschew red and pink
and tender sky-blues and present your bodies living sacrifices in black
materials. I do not believe that God re