er Will and I were taken to chapel on one
very well-remembered Sunday evening. The preacher was the grandfather
of a gentleman who now lives in a castle, and does an enormous trade in
soap. His theme was the omniscience of the Deity, and he told his simple
audience how the same God who made all rolling spheres made the
minutest living things also, and all things intermediate. It was a very
impressive sermon for a child to listen to, and I can recall a great
deal of it to this day. It set my brother's mental apparatus moving, and
he thought to such effect that he started a new theory as to the origin
of the universe. If God had made all things, it appeared clear to him
that somebody must have made God. He suggested that it might have been a
policeman. I accepted this idea with an absolutely tranquil faith, and I
was immediately certain of the very man. The High Constables Act was not
passed until some fourteen or fifteen years later, and it was that Act
which finally abolished the old watchman and installed the policeman
in his place, even in our remotest villages. But I cannot recall a
time when there was not a police barracks in my native High Street. Its
inmates were all "bobbies" or "peelers," out of compliment to "Bobby"
Peel, who called them officially into being in 1829. I know no better
grounds than those afforded by a baby memory that the particular
policeman whom I supposed to have created the Creator was a somewhat
remarkable person in his way. He was six feet four in height, for one
thing, and he was astonishingly cadaverous. I once found a tremulous
occasion to speak to him, and as I looked upward from about the height
of his knee at God Almighty's maker, I thought his stature more than
Himalayan. I forget what I asked, or what he answered; but the sense of
incredible daring is with me still.

I learned later that this elongated solemn coffin of a man was the
champion eater of the district I am not inclined to be nice in
my remembrance of recorded weights and measures; but they had him
registered to an ounce at the "Lewisham Arms," which was only a yard
or two beyond the police barracks, on the road to Handsworth, where he
figured as having consumed a shoulder of mutton, a loaf of bread, a pan
of potatoes, and a dish of cabbage, each of such and such a weight, in
such and such a time. I cannot be sure whether it were at this house
of entertainment, or at another in the neighbourhood, where there was a
glass