Nor the furious winter's _rage_,

and so on? Go to. But I shall not so easily convert Trade Union
orators, Members of Parliament, Mr. Sidney Webb, or the _Times_. To
them a wages is a wage, and an alms an alm, a man's riches his rich,
and his breeches his--at least I suppose so. I wish that we could call
a man's speeches his speech, and find it was perfectly true. It is a
terrible thought, "a terrible ghastly thought" indeed, that we have
not so long ago chosen over seven hundred persons of both sexes, each
of whom will conceive it his right to make a speech in Parliament
every day. Think of it. It is fair to suppose that every one of them
will make one speech every year, many of them, no doubt, one every
week, some certainly every day. I am thankful that I wasn't a
candidate, for I might have been successful. Then I should have been
compelled to listen, and perhaps tempted to reply, to some or all of
those speeches. "In the end thereof despondency and madness."




CHURCH AND THE MAN


At our Peace Celebration the other day that happened which in my
recollection never happened before. The entire village was in the
parish church, sang _Te Deum_, prayed prelatical prayers, and shared
_Hymns Ancient and Modern_. The Congregational Minister, in a black
gown, read the Lesson, the Vicar, in surplice and stole, preached. All
that in a village where more than half the people are Nonconformists,
and done upon the mere motion of that particular section of us.