most interesting, and I didn't care much for any of them. However, the
last but one was called "A Funeral Sermon, preached at the Obsequies of
the Right Honourable the Countess of Carbery;" and I wondered what
obsequies were, and who the Countess of Carbery was, and I thought I
would preach that sermon and try to find out.

There was a very long text, and it was not a very easy one. It was:
"For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which
cannot be gathered up again: neither doth GOD respect any
person: yet doth He devise means that His banished be not expelled from
Him."

The sermon wasn't any easier than the text, and half the _s_'s were like
_f_'s which made it rather hard to preach, and there was Latin mixed up
with it, which I had to skip. I had preached two pages when I got into
the middle of a long sentence, of which part was this: "Every trifling
accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so
wrinkles itself, that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow
like a grave: so do our great and little cares and trifles first make
the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us."

I knew the meaning of the words "wrinkles," and "old age." Godfather
Gilpin's forehead had unusually deep furrows, and, almost against my
will, I turned so quickly to look if his wrinkles were at all like the
graves in the churchyard, that Taylor's _Sermons_, in its heavy binding,
slipped from the pulpit and fell to the ground.

And Godfather Gilpin woke up, and (quite forgetting that he was really
the old gentleman in the pew with the knocker) said, "Dear me, dear me!
is that Jeremy Taylor that you are knocking about like a football? My