standing with the local committees that we get all over a certain amount, besides the collection the last day."
"Well, we might try one. Of course, the Lord may have blessed me with special gifts that way, and to him be all the credit, oh, let's stop in here and have an ice cream soda, I love banana splits, I hope nobody sees me, I feel like dancing tonight, anyway we'll talk over the possibility of healing, I'm going to take a hot bath the minute we get home with losh bath salts—losh and losh and losh."
The success was immense.
She alienated many evangelical pastors by divine healing, but she won all the readers of books about will-power, and her daily miracles were reported in the newspapers. And, or so it was reported, some of her patients remained cured.
She murmured to Elmer, "You know, maybe there really is something to this healing, and I get an enormous thrill out of it—telling the lame to chuck their crutches. That man last night, that cripple—he did feel lots better."
They decorated the altar now with crutches and walking-sticks, all given by grateful patients—except such as Elmer had been compelled to buy to make the exhibit inspiring from the start.
Money gamboled in. One grateful patient gave Sharon five thousand dollars. And Elmer and Sharon had their only quarrel, except for occasional spats of temperament. With the increase in profits, he demanded a rise of salary, and she insisted that her charities took all she had.
"Yuh, I've heard a lot about 'em," said he: "the Old Ladies' Home and the orphanage and the hoosegow for retired preachers. I suppose you carry 'em along with you on the road!"
"Do you mean to insinuate, my good friend, that I—"
They talked in a thoroughly spirited and domestic manner, and afterward she raised his salary to five thousand and kissed him.
With the money so easily come by, Sharon burst out in hectic plans. She was going to buy a ten-thousand-acre farm for a Christian Socialist colony and a university, and she went so far as to get a three-months' option on two hundred acres. She was going to have a great national daily paper, with crime news, scandal, and athletics omitted, and a daily Bible lesson
