Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/93

 CHAPTER III

THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE

the moment of beginning this chapter, which is to concern itself with The Author's Purpose, a memory comes back, very clear and distinct, of a certain Sunday many years ago, and of a rather prim old lady who had been to hear an eccentric and sensational preacher, and who came away shaking her head and murmuring in scandalised wonderment: "Why, he didn't even give out a text!" Now, whether the preacher really had dispensed with a text or whether the bewildered old lady had simply lost sight of it is immaterial; what does matter is that in the sermon we have at least one type of composition in which there is a clearly understood [ 79 ]