ght to be there. 'After all these millions
of years, she ought to be ashamed of herself!' I cried.

LUTON

In a field of that distant, half-neglected farm, I found an avenue of
great elms leading to nothing. But I could see where the wheat-bearing
earth had been levelled into a terrace; and in one corner there were
broken, overgrown, garden gateposts, almost hid among great straggling
trees of yew.

This, then, was the place I had come to see. Here had stood the great
palladian house or palace, with its terraces, and gardens, and
artificial waters; this field had once been the favourite resort of
Eighteenth-Century Fashion; the Duchesses and Beauties had driven hither
in their gilt coaches, and the Beaux and Wits of that golden age of
English Society. And although the house had long since vanished, and the
plough had gone over its pleasant places, yet for a moment I seemed to
see this fine company under the green and gold of that great avenue;
seemed to hear their gossiping voices as they passed on into the
shadows.

THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH

As I came away from the Evening Service, walking home from that Sabbath
adventure, some neighbours of mine passed me in their motor, laughing.
Were they laughing at me? I wondered uneasily; and as I sauntered across
the fields I vaguely cursed those misbelievers. Yes, yes, their eyes
should be darkened, and their lying lips put to silence. They should be
smitten with the botch of Egypt, and a sore botch in the legs that
cannot be healed. All the teeth should be broken in the mouths of those
bloody men and daughters of back-sliding; their faces should become as
flames, and their heads be made utterly bald. Their little ones should
be dashed to pieces before their eyes, and brimstone scattered upon
their habitations. They should be led away with their buttocks
uncovered; they should stagger to and fro as a drunken man staggereth in
his vomit.

But as for the Godly Man who kept his Sabbaths, his should be the
blessings of those who walk in the right way. 'These blessings'--the
words came back to me from the Evening Lesson--'these blessings shall
come upon thee, and overtake thee.' And suddenly, in the mild summer
air, it seemed as if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the
blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot,
remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate
and unctuous lives of that infuriate