r. Prong was to him the
evil thing! Anathema! He believed all bad things of Mr. Prong with
an absolute faith, but without any ground on which such faith should
have been formed. He thought that Mr. Prong drank spirits; that
he robbed his parishioners;--Dr. Harford would sooner have lost
his tongue than have used such a word with reference to those who
attended Mr. Prong's chapel;--that he had left a deserted wife on
some parish; that he was probably not in truth ordained. There was
nothing which Dr. Harford could not believe of Mr. Prong. Now all
this was, to say the least of it, a pity, for it disfigured the close
of a useful and conscientious life.

Dr. Harford of course intended to vote for Mr. Cornbury, but he
would not join loudly in condemnation of Mr. Tappitt. Tappitt had
stood stanchly by him in all parochial contests regarding the new
district. Tappitt opposed the Prong faction at all points. Tappitt as
churchwarden had been submissive to the doctor. Church of England
principles had always been held at the brewery, and Bungall had been
ever in favour with Dr. Harford's predecessor.

"He calls himself a Liberal, and always has done," said the doctor.
"You can't expect that he should desert his own party."

"But a Jew!" said old Mr. Comfort.

"Well; why not a Jew?" said the doctor. Whereupon Mr. Comfort, and
Butler Cornbury, and Dr. Harford's own curate, young Mr. Calclough,
and Captain Byng, an old bachelor, who lived in Baslehurst, all
stared at him; as Dr. Harford had intended that they should. "Upon
my word," said he, "I don't see the use for caring for that kind of
thing any longer; I don't indeed. In the way we are going on now, and
for the sort of thing we do, I don't see why Jews shouldn't serve
us as well in Parliament as Christians. If I am to have my brains
knocked out, I'd sooner have it done by a declared enemy than by one
who calls himself my friend."

"But our brains are not knocked out yet," said Butler Cornbury.

"I don't know anything about yours, but mine are."

"I don't think the world's coming to an end yet," said the captain.

"Nor do I. I said nothing about the world coming to an end. But if
you saw a part of your ship put under the command of a landlubber,
who didn't know one side of the vessel from the other, you'd think
the world had better come to an end than be carried on in that way."

"It's not the same thing, you know," said the captain. "You couldn't
divide a ship."

"