THE DEANERY, CHICHESTER,
27th May.

My Dearest Aunt,

Thank you so much for the flannel for the Dorcas Society, and also
for the gingham. I quite agree with you that it is nonsense their
wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and
irreligious nowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that
they should not try and dress like the upper classes. I am sure I
don't know what we are coming to. As papa has often said in his
sermons, we live in an age of unbelief.

We have had great fun over a clock that an unknown admirer sent papa
last Thursday. It arrived in a wooden box from London, carriage
paid, and papa feels it must have been sent by some one who had read
his remarkable sermon, 'Is Licence Liberty?' for on the top of the
clock was a figure of a woman, with what papa said was the cap of
Liberty on her head. I didn't think it very becoming myself, but
papa said it was historical, so I suppose it is all right. Parker
unpacked it, and papa put it on the mantelpiece in the library, and
we were all sitting there on Friday morning, when just as the clock
struck twelve, we heard a whirring noise, a little puff of smoke
came from the pedestal of the figure, and the goddess of Liberty
fell off, and broke her nose on the fender! Maria was quite
alarmed, but it looked so ridiculous, that James and I went off into
fits of laughter, and even papa was amused. When we examined it, we
found it was a sort of alarum clock, and that, if you set it to a
particular hour, and put some gunpowder and a cap under a little