then, and that I firmly believed I never should be married--not from
any ambition taking the form of self-denial; nor yet from any notion
that God takes pleasure in being a hard master; but there was a
lady--Well, I WILL be honest, as I would be.--I had been refused a
few months before, which I think was the best thing ever happened to
me except one. That one, of course, was when I was accepted. But
this is not much to the purpose now. Only it was depressing weather.

For is it not depressing when the rain is falling, and the steam of
it is rising? when the river is crawling along muddily, and the
horses stand stock-still in the meadows with their spines in a
straight line from the ears to where they fail utterly in the tails?
I should only put on goloshes now, and think of the days when I
despised damp. Ah! it was mental waterproof that I needed then; for
let me despise damp as much as I would, I could neither keep it out
of my mind, nor help suffering the spiritual rheumatism which it
occasioned. Now, the damp never gets farther than my goloshes and my
Macintosh. And for that worst kind of rheumatism--I never feel it
now.

But I had begun to tell you about that first evening.--I had
arrived at the vicarage the night before, and it had rained all day,
and was still raining, though not so much. I took my umbrella and
went out.

For as I wanted to do my work well (everything taking far more the
shape of work to me, then, and duty, than it does now--though, even
now, I must confess things have occasionally to be done by the
clergyman because there is no one else to do them, and hardly from
other motive than a sense of duty,--a man not being able to shirk