I was preaching for a single Sabbath in Brooklyn. In the course
of my discourse I lost my head; in fact, I lost all of them.
Three were on paper, and one on my shoulders; and they all went
at once.
I tried to remember what I had had in my head, but, like the old
king’s dream, the matter had gone from me.
I tried to decipher what I had put upon paper, but the writing
had faded out.
Everything was gone except the audience, and I could have wished
that they were gone, too.
I pounded the desk; I pawed the floor; I clawed the air.
I poured whole broadsides of big dictionary into those
long-suffering people, but without a single scintilla of sense.
At last I struck a line of thought, and clutched it with the
grip of despair, and pulled myself out of the hole in which
I had been floundering, and then limped along to a “lame
conclusion.”
And then so mortified was I that I would have sunk through the
floor, could I have found a vacant nail-hole. As that was out of
the question, I would fain have sneaked away without speaking to
a human being; but, as bad luck would have it, I had promised to
go home to dinner with the Hon. William Richardson, one of the
most cultured members of the congregation.
We walked some distance before either spoke a word. Finally, I
broke silence--I felt like breaking everything in sight--and I
said, “Richardson, was not that the very worst you ever heard?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Mean?” I replied, catching savagely at the word. “‘Mean’ is no
name for it. You must have noticed how under the third head
of my discourse I lost my head, and ripped and raved and tore
around like a lunatic. What did the people think of it?”
“Think of it? Think of it?” he repeated with sincere surprize.
“Why, they thought it was the best part of the whole sermon.”
And then I said to myself, and I said to him, “What is the use
of talking sense to the people when they like the other so
much better?” Possibly this may serve to account for the fact
that these same people subsequently called me to become their
pastor.--P. S. HENSON, _Christian Endeavor World_.
(1359)
=Headstrong=--See WILFULNESS.