"I am willing to stand by this as my epitaph," he repeated after me, in his gravest tones. Now this scene was not an interview, but a revelation, and I felt that it "was good to be there." But, as an engagement called us to go out together, we arose. "I wish you could have seen more of my parish work," he said, as we walked in the rain. He recurred to his favorite topic eagerly. "For that is my real life." [Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.] "Sermons?" The word started him off. "I have no patience with the idea that it takes six days of grinding to write a sermon. What nonsense! A sermon consists of about two thousand five hundred words. I take a cup of coffee before breakfast and write about six pages--that is, six hundred and fifty words. In the morning I dictate to my amanuensis one thousand five hundred words. I am intensely interested in the subject, and this takes only a quarter of an hour. In the afternoon I look it over and add five or six hundred words, and the sermon is done. In all, I haven't put my hand for over two hours to paper." Although I have written a sermon or two myself, and had a different experience, I did not argue the point. I have a faint suspicion that it would take most people fifty years of experience to arrive at such a wonderful facility. Power? Where did Doctor Hale get the strength to carry through his hundred duties?--editing--writing--aiding public work and public and private charities--correspondence--for he is the busiest man in Boston, and his business increases upon him week by week in an appalling ratio. "How on earth do you do it all? Where do you get the power? What is it?" "The simple truth is," and I quote his words exactly, "that any child of God, who in any adequate way believes that he can partake of the divine nature, knows that he has strength enough for any business which looks the right way; that is, which helps to bring God's kingdom into the world. Well, if you are working with Aladdin's lamp, or with Monte Cristo's treasures, you are not apt to think you will fail. Far less will you think you will fail if you are working with the omnipotence of the Lord God behind you. When people talk to me, therefore, about optimism or good spirits or expecting success, if I know them well enough I say that I am promised infinite power to work with, and that whenever I have trusted it fairly and squarely, I have found that the promise was true." He stopped, and under the shelter of a high steeple we separated: and the parish priest, the author, the eager citizen, the helper of poor girls and struggling young men, the man of power, the Christian cosmopolitan, strode down the street, and was lost in the mist.