"If I had the making and raising of ministers," Grandma was heard to say, apropos of this clergyman, "about the first thing I'd set them to learning would be to laugh, first at themselves and then at other people. And as for this repentance and exhortation business I believe it is worn out. Humans have gotten tired of that 'last call for the paradise express.' They like this world and its life and they know they could be pretty decent if somebody would only explain a few little things to them. It isn't that they hate religion but they want to be allowed to grow into it naturally and sanely. Religion getting ought to be the quietest, happiest process, just pleasant neighboring like and comparing of ideas, with every now and then a holy hush when men and women have suddenly sensed some big beauty in life. All this noise is unnecessary, for every living soul of us, barring idiots, repents several times a day even though we don't admit it in so many words. And as for righteous wrath--it's a good thing and I believe in it, but like cayenne pepper it wants to be used sparingly and only at the right place and on the right person. Any one would think to hear some ministers talk that the Almighty was a combination of Theodore Roosevelt, the Kaiser and a New York Police Commissioner working the third degree. "I wonder what the colleges can be thinking of, turning loose such stale foolishness and old canned stuff on a mellow, sunny little home town like Green Valley that's full of plain, blundering but well-meaning, God-fearing people who work joyfully at their business of living and turn up more religion when they plow a furrow or make over the wedding dress for the baby than these ministers can dig up out of all their musty books. I've prayed for all kinds of qualities in ministers but I've come to the point where I ask nothing more of a preacher than a laugh now and then, some horse sense and health. "I used to think that only mature men ought to be sent out but now I shall be glad to see a boy in the pulpit to show us the way to salvation,--a boy it may be with a head full of foolish notions that old folks say are not practical and some of which won't of course stand wear; but a boy, with a glad young face, eyes full of faith and dreams and the sort of insane courage and daring that only the young know. Such a boy needs considerable education in certain earthly matters, of course, but he's lovable and teachable and will in time grow into a real, God-knowing, truth-interpreting man."