"Of the fourteenth chapter," said the minister.
"Fourteenth chapter!" said Willie, almost aloud.
"Of Luke."
Willie was all ears, while Mr. Blake read: "Then said he also to him that
bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends,
nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they
also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest
a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind."
"That's it!" he said, half aloud, but his mother jogged him.
Willie had never listened to a sermon as he did to that. He stopped two
or three times to wonder whether the cane had been actually about to
repeat his father's text to him, or whether he had not heard his father
repeat it at some time, and had dreamed about it.
I am not going to tell you much about Mr. Blake's sermon. It was a sermon
that he and the walking-stick had prepared while they were going round
among the poor. I think Mr. Blake did not strike his cane down on the
sidewalk for nothing. Most of that sermon must have been hammered out in
that way, when he and the walking-stick were saying, "Something must be
done!" For that was just what that sermon said. It told about the wrong
of forgetting, on the birthday of Christ, to do anything for the poor.
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