and angry. I had heard the words from the hall:--

"She must give it up, your reverence. Her little chest is all falling
in, and she's as white as a corpse."

"One of the girls giving up work at the machines," he replied. "She's
suffering from chest trouble, it appears, from bending over this work."

"Who is she?" I queried.

"Minnie Carmody--that tall girl who sat near the door."

"H'm," I said. "I think it would be nearer the truth to say that Minnie
Carmody's delicacy comes from the vinegar bottle and white paper. She
was ashamed of her red face, and this is the latest recommendation of
the novelette to banish roses, and leave the lilies of anaemia and
consumption."

"It augurs badly, however," he replied. "The factory is not open quite a
month yet."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SERMON

I am quite sure that sermon cost me more anxiety and trouble than Father
Letheby suffered. I was deeply interested in its success, of course. But
that was not the point. I am probably the feeblest and worst preacher in
my diocese. This gives me the indefeasible right to dogmatize about
preaching. Just as failures in literary attempts are the credentials of
a great critic, so writers on sermons can claim the high authority and
ambassadorship to dictate to the world, on the grounds that they are
incapable of producing even a catechetical discourse. But they fall back
upon that universal and indisputable privilege of our race--the belief
in their own infallibility. It often surprised me that the definition of
Papal Infallibility, which concentrated in the Vicegerent of the Most
High the reputed privilege of our race, did not create a greater outcry.
It was the final onslaught of the Holy Spirit on the unspeakable vanity
of the race. It was the death-blow to private judgment. At least, it
ought to have been. But, alas! human vanity and presumption are eternal
and indestructible. From the corner-boy here at my window, who asks
indignantly, "Why the deuce did not Gladstone push his Bill through the
House of Lords, and then force the Commons to accept it?" to the flushed
statesman, whose dream is Imperialism; from the little manikin critic,
who swells out his chest, and demands summary vengeance on that idiot of
an author who has had the daring presumption to write a book on the
Greek accent, or binary stars, up to the _Jupiter Tonans_ of the
world-wide circulating journal, which dictates to the universe, it is
all the same. Each f