r. For the women, whatsoever their
temperaments, or even their tastes might be, took to this to me
incomprehensible religion naturally and instinctively; while the
very few men who were in their clique were-I don't deny some of them
were good men enough-if they had been men at all: if they had been
well-read, or well-bred, or gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal-
minded, or, in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued hunt-
the-slippers nine out of ten of them were. I recollect well asking
my mother once, whether there would not be five times more women
than men in heaven-and her answering me sadly and seriously, that
she feared there would be. And in the meantime she brought me up to
pray and hope that I might some day be converted, and become a child
of God-And one could not help wishing to enjoy oneself as much as
possible before that event happened."

"Before that event happened, my dear fellow? Pardon me, but your
tone is somewhat irreverent."

"Very likely. I had no reason put before me for regarding such a
change as anything but an unpleasant doom, which would cut me off,
or ought to do so, from field sports, from poetry, from art, from
science, from politics-for Christians, I was told, had nothing to do
with the politics of this world-from man and all man's civilisation,
in short; and leave to me, as the only two lawful indulgences, those
of living in a good house, and begetting a family of children."

"And did you throw off the old Creeds for the sake of the
civilisation which you fancied that they forbid?"

"No. I am a Churchman, you know; principally on political grounds,
or from custom, or from-the devil knows what, perhaps-I do not."

"Probably it is God, and not the devil, who knows why, Templeton."

"Be it so-Frightful as it is to have to say it-I do not so much
care-I suppose it is all right: if it is not, it will all come
right at last. And in the meantime, I compromise, like the rest of
the world; and hear Jane making the children every week-day pray
that they may become God's children, and then teaching them every
Sunday evening the Catechism, which says that they are so already.
I don't understand it-I suppose if it was important, one would
understand it. One knows right from wrong, you know, and other
fundamentals. If that were necessary, one would know that too."

"But can you submit quietly to such a barefaced contradiction?"

"I? I am only a plain country squire. Of cou