office hours, so have the curates, and they will 'cheerfully come in
response to any call.' It was pleasant to have one's pastor drop in now
and then in a sympathetic sort of way, pleasant to have a chance to ask
his advice without formally sending for him as if you wished to be prayed
over! But everything has grown so big and mechanical that there is not
time. The clergy in many high places are emancipating themselves from the
Bible and preaching politics, history, fiction, local sensation, and what
not, or lauding in print the moral qualities of a drama in which the
friendship between Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot is dwelt on and the
latter adjudged a patriot. I don't like it, and I don't like hurrying to
church that I may secure my seat in the corner of our once family pew,
where as a child I loved to think that the light that shone across my
face from a particular star in one of the stained-glass windows was a
special message to me. It all hurts, and I do not deny that I am bitter.
Those in charge of gathering in new souls should take heed how they
ignore or trample on the old crop!

"So I attend to my household duties, marketing, take my exercise, and
keep up my French and German; but when evening comes, no one rings the
bell except some intoxicated person looking for one of the lodging houses
opposite, and the silence is positively asphyxiating--if they would only
play an accordion in the kitchen I should be grateful. I'm really
thinking of offering the maids a piano and refreshments if they will give
an 'at home' once a week, as the only men in the neighbourhood seem to be
the butchers and grocery clerks and the police. There is an inordinate
banging going on in the rear of the house, and I must break off to see
what it _is_."

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