brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances might
help to the persuading of a fair young woman, under his direction . . .
having her hand disengaged. Mr. Barmby started himself in the dream of
his uninterred passion for the maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it
hence, as a present sacrilege:--constantly, and at the pitch of our
highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it, that
the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate
clergy have grant of immunity. But, alas, it is not so with them! We
have to deplore the hearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed
to contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity
of soul. Nor is there a refuge in asceticism. No more devilish
nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And
strangely, at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon
others, they are led by woman to glance revolving upon ourself, our vile
self! Mr. Barmby clutched it by the neck.

Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him to
forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all
revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending
cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!--The habitual
necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his
meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, of
good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He
had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him
with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear.
Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion
united, as we see sorrowful crape-wreathed countenances. His heart
struck heavily when the house was visible.

Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But