Now there arose a second reason for squeezing into an already overcrowded
church. The persuasive and gentle eloquence of Mr. Sainway operated like
a charm upon those accustomed only to the higher and dryer styles of
preaching, and for a time the other churches of the town were thinned of
their sitters.

At this point in the nineteenth century the sermon was the sole reason
for churchgoing amongst a vast body of religious people. The liturgy was
a formal preliminary, which, like the Royal proclamation in a court of
assize, had to be got through before the real interest began; and on
reaching home the question was simply: Who preached, and how did he
handle his subject? Even had an archbishop officiated in the service
proper nobody would have cared much about what was said or sung. People
who had formerly attended in the morning only began to go in the evening,
and even to the special addresses in the afternoon.

One day when Captain Maumbry entered his wife's drawing-room, filled with
hired furniture, she thought he was somebody else, for he had not come
upstairs humming the most catching air afloat in musical circles or in
his usual careless way.

'What's the matter, Jack?' she said without looking up from a note she
was writing.

'Well--not much, that I know.'

'O, but there is,' she murmured as she wrote.

'Why--this cursed new lath in a sheet--I mean the new parson! He wants
us to stop the band-playing on Sunday afternoons.'