them so.
Robin, for instance, was probably saved by his father's unclouded
faith in him. Mrs. Morrison, a woman who had much trouble with
herself, having come into the world with the wings of the angel in her
well glued down and prevented from spreading by a multitude of little
defects, had been helped without her knowing it by his example out of
many a pit of peevishness and passion. Who shall measure the influence
of one kind and blameless life? His wife, in her gustier moments,
thought it sheer weakness, this persistent turning away from evil,
this refusal to investigate and dissect, to take sides, to wrestle.
The evil was there, and it was making an ostrich or a vegetable of
one's self to go on being calm in the face of it. With the blindness
of wives, who are prevented from seeing clearly by the very closeness
of the object--the same remark exactly applies to husbands--she did
not see that the vicar was the candle shining in a naughty world, that
he was the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. And just as leaven
leavens by its mere presence in the lump, by merely passively being
there, and will go on doing it so long as there is a lump to leaven,
so had the vicar, more than his hardworking wife, more than the
untiring Lady Shuttleworth, more than any district visitor, parish
nurse, or other holy person, influenced Symford by simply living in it
in a way that would have surprised him had he known. There is a great
virtue in sweeping out one's own house and trimming its lamps before
starting on the house and lamps of a neighbour; and since new dust
settles every day, and lamps, I believe, need constant trimming, I
know not when the truly tidy soul will have attained so perfect a
spotlessness as to justify its issuing forth to attack the private
dust of other people. And if it ever did, lo, it would find the
necessity no longer there. Its bright untiringness would
unconsciously have done its work, and every dimmer soul within sight
of that cheerful shining been strengthened and inspired to go and do
likewise.

But Mrs. Morrison, who saw things differently, was constantly trying
to stir up storms in the calm waters of the vicar's mind; and after
the episode in Mrs. Jones's front garden she made a very determined
effort to get him to rebuke Priscilla. Her own indignation was poured
out passionately. The vicar was surprised at her heat, he who was so
beautifully cool himself, and though he shook his head over Mrs.
Jo