need a stage-manager. Let your hair grow, wear a red robe, do
healing--"

He laughed protestingly. "Oh, I'm not a prophet, Aunt Bell--I've learned
that."

"But you could be, with proper managing. There's that perfectly stunning
beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you
make nothing of it--it might have happened to anybody and it never came
to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed
alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he
told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the
reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story
of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent--_any_ kind of accent
would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your message, and
I'd guarantee you a following of thousands in New York in a month. Of
course they'd leave you for the next fellow that came along with a key
to the book of Revelations, or a new diet or something, but you'd keep
them a while."

Aunt Bell paused, enthusiastic, but somewhat out of breath.

"I'll quit, Aunt Bell--that's enough--"

"Mr. Spencer is an example for you. Contrast his hold on the masses with
Mrs. Eddy's, who appeals to the imagination. I'm told by those who have
read his works that he had quite the knack of logic, and yet the
President of Princeton Theological Seminary preaches a sermon in which
he calls him 'the greatest failure of the age.' I read it in this
morning's paper. His text was, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me.'