“I can never forget her comment on the first sermon in which I let myself go into the fervor which was given me by nature. It was an appeal for foreign missions, a cause always dear to my heart. I was carried away by my feelings, and fairly poured out my soul to my listeners. I have always considered that to be my first real sermon, the first time I felt sure of my Vocation. Afterwards, as I stood in the robing room, faint with the reaction after my emotion, I heard some one just outside the door say, ‘Well, Aunt Almera, what did you think of the sermon?’ And what do you think her answer was! She said, ‘Oh, I _like_ to see anybody enjoy himself as much as that young man did.’” This unexpected conclusion brought to me such a sudden horrifying desire to laugh that I felt quite shaken by the necessity to curb it. And it was essential not to let it be seen. For he had wound himself up again to a heat which astonished me. It was as if he had meant casually to show me an old scar, and had found to his surprise that the wound was as raw and smarting as ever. “Why,” he cried, “she all but drove me wholly out of preaching, at the very outset of my career, sitting there as she did, Sunday after Sunday, fixing that cynical aged eye on me. You can’t know ... I hear that you have been brought up, luckily for you, outside of this deadly New England atmosphere.... You can’t _imagine_ how it kills and freezes all the warmth and color and fire out of life to have such a ... if I hadn’t escaped out of it to....” “I’m afraid I’ve been brought up mostly in a New England atmosphere,” I said, beginning to feel very cross and prickly. As if struck by something in my tone, he now looked at me very hard. I don’t know what he saw in my face ... perhaps a family resemblance of expression ... but he suddenly seemed to come to himself with a start. He said abruptly, with an expression of extreme annoyance once more on his face, “I beg your pardon for bringing all this up. I can’t think what in the world made me!” and turned away with a noticeable lack of suavity and grace of manner.