comfortably stout and
evangelical man, lived for forty years on terms of affectionate
intimacy with three successive ministers of the Congregational Church,
the deacons of which shared with his vestrymen the control of the
village councils.

The summer residents divided their attendance impartially between the
two houses of worship. Even in the distribution of parts in the amateur
theatricals which were given every year by the villagers in the town
hall at the height of the season, no difference was made between the
adherents of the ancient faith of Connecticut and the followers of the
more recently introduced order of Episcopacy. When old Dr. Snodgrass
died and was buried, the Rev. Cotton Mather Hopkins, who was an
energetic widower of perhaps thirty-five years, made an eloquent
address at his funeral, comparing him to the prophet Samuel, the
apostle John, and a green bay tree whose foundations are built upon the
rock. In short, all was tranquil in the ecclesiastical atmosphere of
Samaria. There was not a cloud upon the horizon.

The air changed with the arrival of the new rector, the Rev. Willibert
Beauchamp Jones, B.D., from the Divinity School of St. Jerome at
Oshkosh. He was a bachelor, not only of divinity but also in the social
sense; a plump young man of eight and twenty summers, with an English
accent, a low-crowned black felt hat, blue eyes, a cherubic smile, and
very high views on liturgics. He was full of the best intentions toward
the whole world, a warm advocate of the reunion of Christendom on his
platform, and a man of sincere enthusiasm who regarded Samaria as a
missionary field and was prepared to consecrate his life to it. The
only point in which he was not true to the teachings of his professors
at St. Jerome's was the celibacy of the parish clergy. Here he held
that the tradition of the Greek Church was to be preferred to that of
the Roman, and felt in his soul that the priesthood and matrimony were
not inconsistent. In fact, he was secretly ambitious to prove their
harmony in his own person. He was a very social young man, and firm in
his resolution to be kind and agreeable to everybody, even to those who
were outside of the true fold.

Mr. Hopkins called on him without delay and was received with
cordiality amounting to _empressement_. The two men talked together in
the friendliest manner of interests that they had in common, books,
politics, and out-of-door sports, to which both of them were a