The Misses Arbour (for that was their name) mixed but little in the
society of the town. They explained to me that their health would not
permit it. They read books--a few--but they were not books about which
I knew very much, and they belonged altogether to an age preceding
mine. Of the names which had moved me, and of all the thoughts
stirring in the time, they had heard nothing. They greatly admired
Cowper, a poet who then did not much attract me.

The country near me was rather level, but towards the west it rose into
soft swelling hills, between which were pleasant lanes. At about ten
miles distant eastward was the sea. A small river ran across the High
Street under a stone bridge; for about two miles below us it was locked
up for the sake of the mills, but at the end of the two miles it became
tidal and flowed between deep and muddy banks through marshes to the
ocean. Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to these
marshes, and as far on as possible till the open water was visible.
Not that I did not like inland scenery: nobody could like it more, but
the sea was a corrective to the littleness all round me. With the
ships on it sailing to the other end of the earth it seemed to connect
me with the great world outside the parochialism of the society in
which I lived.

Such was the town of C-, and such the company amidst which I found
myself. After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new
duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings--two rooms over the
shop of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and sexton.
There was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and
the rest of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time
I took charge did not exceed another seventy.