o be
wrathfully destroyed, and that this miserable world was full of equally
miserable, broken, sinful, sickly people.

The sermon was a little better, for somewhere hidden within him this
pale young man had a spark of the divine fire, but it was so dampened by
the atmosphere of the church that it never rose above a pale luminosity.

I found the service indescribably depressing. I had an impulse to rise
up and cry out--almost anything to shock these people into opening their
eyes upon real life. Indeed, though I hesitate about setting it down
here, I was filled for some time with the liveliest imaginings of the
following serio-comic enterprise:

I would step up the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee,
wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the
condition of the church.

"The only live thing here," I would tell him, "is the spark in that pale
minister's soul; and you're doing your best to smother that."

And I fully made up my mind that when he answered back in his
chief-pharisaical way I would gently--but firmly remove him from his
seat, shake him vigorously two or three times (men's souls have often
been saved with less!), deposit him flat in the aisle, and yes--stand on
him while I elucidated the situation to the audience at large. While
I confined this amusing and interesting project to the humours of the
imagination I am still convinced that something of the sort would have
helped enormously in clearing up the religious and moral atmosphere of
the place.

I had a wonderful sensation of relief when at last I stepped out again
into the clear afternoon sunshine and got a reviving glimpse of the
smiling green hills and the quiet fields and the sincere trees--and felt
the welcome of the friendly road.

I would have made straight for the hills, but the thought of that pale
minister held me back; and I waited quietly there under the trees till
he came out. He was plainly looking for me, and asked me to wait and
walk along with him, at which his four boys, whose acquaintance I had
made under such thrilling circumstances earlier in the day, seemed
highly delighted, and waited with me under the tree and told me a
hundred important things about a certain calf, a pig, a kite, and other
things at home.

Arriving at the minister's gate, I was invited in with a
whole-heartedness that was altogether charming. The minister's wife,
a faded-looking woman who had once possessed a delica