re chiefly likenesses of those who had been his own
converts to total abstinence, with here and there the portrait of some
well-known temperance advocate.

To the left of the hall was the parlour or company sitting-room, which
was adorned with portraits, or what were designed to be such, of the
Queen and other members of the royal family. Over the fire-place was a
handsome mirror, on either side of which were photographs of the vicar
and his wife; and on the opposite side of the room stood a bookcase with
glass doors, containing a small but judicious selection of volumes,
religious, historical, biographical, and scientific: for Thomas Bradly
was a reader in a humble way, and had a memory tenacious of anything
that struck him. But the pride of this choice apartment was an enormous
illustrated Bible, sumptuously bound, which lay on the middle of a round
table that occupied the centre of the room.

The kitchen, however, was the real daily living-place of the family. It
had been built of unusually large dimensions, in order to accommodate a
goodly number of temperance friends, or of the members of the Band of
Hope, who occasionally met there. Over the doors and windows were large
texts in blue, and over the ample fire-place, in specially large letters
of the same colour, the words, "Do the next thing."

Many who called on Thomas Bradly, and saw this maxim for the first time,
were rather puzzled to know what it meant. "What _is_ `the next
thing'?" they would ask. "Why, it's just this," he would reply: "the
next thing is the thing nearest to your hand. Just do the thing as
comes nearest to hand, and be content to do _that_ afore you concern
yourself about anything else. These words has saved me a vast of
trouble and worry. I've read somewhere as `worry' is one of the
specially prominent troubles of our day. I think that's true enough.
Well, now, I've found my motto there--`Do the next thing'--a capital
remedy for worry. Sometimes I've come down of a morning knowing as I'd
a whole lot of things to get done, and I've been strongly tempted to
make a bundle of them, and do them all at once, or try, at any rate, to
do three or four of 'em at the same time. But then I've just cast my
eyes on them words, and I've said to myself, `All right, Thomas Bradly;
you just go and do the next thing;' and I've gone and done it, and after
that I've done the next thing, and so on till I've got through the whole
bundle."

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