!" said Mr. Philpot, clearing his
throat, and speaking from the other end of the table, "that
respectfulness of yours is a quality to which I myself attach very
little importance." In view of this speech we felt considerable
satisfaction when, a few hours later, the day being the 5th of November,
a disturbance was made by some boys at the front door, and Mr. Philpot,
snatching up a tall hat, went out to appease the storm by the serene
majesty of his presence. He was far from gratified when the immediate
result of his intervention was to elicit the disrespectful cry of "Hit
'n on the bloody drum."

But, besides the novelty, as we thought it, of his vague democratic
opinions, he exhibited what to me was at least equally novel--namely, a
liberalism before unknown to me with regard to theological doctrine. He
never obtruded this on us in any systematic way; but on not infrequent
occasions he solemnly gave us to understand that dissenters enjoyed the
means of salvation no less fully than Churchmen; that sacraments were
mere symbols useful for edification according to varying circumstances;
that sacerdotal orders were mere certificates of the fitness of
individuals for the office of Christian ministers, and that everything
in the nature of dogmatic authority was due to, and tainted with, the
apostacy of Babylonian Rome. To myself all this was shocking in an
extreme degree, and I began to ask myself the question, which might
otherwise not have occurred to me, of whether the Church of Rome was not
perhaps the one true religion, after all.

These movements of the spirit on my part led to the following incident.
Among Mr. Philpot's pupils was a shy and very delicate boy, whose
parents took a house at Littlehampton, and with whom he lived. His
father was a fire-eating Irish baronet, who might have walked out of the
pages of one of Lever's novels. His diet was as meager as that of an
Indian fakir, though not otherwise resembling it. It consisted of rum
and milk; and his favorite amusement was lying down on his bed and
shooting with a pistol at the wick of a lighted candle. His wife--a lady
of gentle and somewhat sad demeanor--one day took it into her head to
join the Catholic Church; and Mr. Philpot hastened, as soon as he heard
the news, to ask her, in the name of common sense and of conscience,
what could have induced her to take a step so awful. Her answer, so he
informed me afterward, was that I had told her that it was the be