k that there is any Cecilia in his case,
nor that there is likely to be one. He personifies the abstract
too passionately to need the love of women.

Africa is personified to him the Cinderella of the continents,
the drudge with a destiny worthy of her charms and her good-temper.
He is writing a monograph on the Song of Solomon, he tells
me. He follows certain scholars in his conjecture that the
Shulamite was given back to a humble shepherd by Solomon, when
she had conquered the latter by the power of her impassioned
chastity. But he has his own theory as well that the true lovers
were both of African blood, that she came from the Ophir-land
south of the Zambesi, and thither returned in peace at last from
the foam of perilous seas. Perhaps his argument is slender; but
it is good for him to believe in it himself, I think, for surely
it helps his work among those that he deems her descendants.

He works on out there, personifying and idealizing. I think he
is as much in love with his country parish as I am with mine in
England. May we both, in our placid and unfashionable ways, dream
our dreams and see our visions! Meanwhile Leonard Reeve reigns
in that midland town, and is treasured by the bishop who was not
deceived when he expected a kindred spirit. He and Cecilia have
chosen a date in this next November for their deferred marriage.

Their choice of month seems to me characteristic. I do not think
they will be disappointed if the day is a little urban in its
murkiness.

It is good for a man to be in love with his charge, is it not?
Next time some fanatic of West-End work, or East-End work, or
foreign mission work gets hold of you and talks excellent sense
about discipline, and offering yourself to your bishop, and
packing up your kit at a week's notice remember this story of
mine!

Is it not well to import something of the precise devotion of
Holy Matrimony into the general self-oblation of Holy Orders?

It is good to think that three of us friends have the very same
sort of feeling Leonard Reeve for the crowds and the fogs and the
odors; my cousin for the rock-sown plains and the little circles
of thatched huts; I for the cornlands and the elm-shaded ridges
and the cottage people.

Yes, to Leonard anything grimy is just as romantic as green
fields to me, or brown veld to my cousin.

Do you know, I was asked to preach Leonard's Institution sermon
last Whit Monday, and I dared to preach it? Cecilia, who was