ariness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the terrible
fate which awaited those who never went to church, and the still more
untoward end which was in store for frequenters of dissenting
meeting-houses, failed to awaken in us the respect due to the
occasion.

On the way to church we had generally to pass by those who dared even
the awful fate of the latter. It was our idea that to tantalize us
they wore especially gorgeous apparel while we had to wear black Etons
and a top hat--which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat
especially excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title
"specklebelly," by which we ever afterwards designated the whole
"genus nonconformist." The entrance to the chapel (ours was the
Church!) was through a door in a high wall, over which we could not
see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange
orgies which we felt must take place in those precincts which we were
never permitted to enter. Our Sunday Scripture lessons had grounded us
very familiarly with the perverse habits of that section of the Chosen
People who _would_ serve Baal and Moloch, when it obviously paid so
much better not to do so. But although we counted the numbers which we
saw going in, and sometimes met them coming out, they seemed never to
lessen perceptibly. On this account our minds, with the merciless
logic of childhood, gradually discounted the threatened calamities.

This must have accounted for the lapse in our own conduct, and a sort
of comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in
merely counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother
who got into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety
that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father
that the pew in front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so
as to make its occupants the object of undisguised attention from the
rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us,
he offered some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on which we had
been cooking chocolates on the steam pipes during the sermon.

In all my childhood I can only remember one single punishment, among
not a few which I received, which I resented--and for years I never
quite forgot it. Some one had robbed a very favourite apple tree in
our orchard--an escapade of which I was perfectly capable, but in this
instance had not had the satisfaction of sharing. Some evidence had
been lodge