Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.

If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the charity,
the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father Pemberton, he would
have found a small remnant of the "Old Man," as the good clergyman would
have called it, which was never in harmony with the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The
younger divine felt his importance, and made his venerable colleague feel
that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair chance at rainy Sundays and
hot summer-afternoon services; but the junior pushed him aside without
ceremony whenever he thought there was like to be a good show in the
pews. As for those courtesies which the old need, to soften the sense of
declining faculties and failing attractions, the younger pastor bestowed
them in public, but was negligent of them, to say the least, when not on
exhibition.

Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
signify?

Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a