moments more, the group had collected round the cardtable. The best of
us are but human--that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people
forget it every day of their lives--and I dare say there are many who are
charitably thinking at this very moment that my parson ought not to be
playing at whist. All I can say to those rigid disciplinarians is,
"Every man has his favourite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!--ladies and
gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson,
nowadays, as a pattern parson,--it is enough to have one pattern in a
village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield
has bespoken that place, and got the patronage of the stocks for his
emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but
still at a time when Churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they
do now. The elderly parson of that day played his rubber as a matter of
course, the middle-aged parson was sometimes seen riding to cover (I knew
a schoolmaster, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils
were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who hunted
regularly three times a week during the season), and the young parson
would often sing a capital song--not composed by David--and join in those
rotatory dances, which certainly David never danced before the ark.

Does it need so long an exordium to excuse thee, poor Parson Dale, for
turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a smile at thy partner?
I must own that nothing which could well add to the parson's offence was
wanting. In the first place, he did not play charitably, and merely to
oblige other people. He delighted in the game, he rejoiced in the game,
his whole heart was in the game,--neither was he indifferent to the
mammon of the thing, as a Christian pastor ought to have been. He looked
very sad when he took his shillings out of his purse, and exceedingly
pleased when he put the shillings that had just before belonged to other
people into it. Finally, by one of those arrangements common with