Part 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER III--WATER LANE

I had now reached the end of e, and it was time for me to leave I was sent down into the eastern counties to a congregation which had lost its minister, and was there ”on probation”

for a ood speaker, and as the ”cause” had got very low, the attendance at the chapel increased during the ht they had a prospect of returning prosperity, and in the end I received a nearly unanimous invitation, which, after some hesitation, I accepted One of the deacons, a Mr

Snale, was against ht I was not ”quite sound”; but he was overruled We shall hear more of him presently After a short holiday I entered on my new duties

The toas one of those which are not uncommon in that part of the world It had a population of about seven or eight thousand, and was a sort of condensation of the agricultural country round There was oneprincipally of very decent, respectable shops

Generally speaking, there were two shops of each trade; one which was patronised by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and Whigs The inhabitants were divided into two distinct ca On the other hand, the knowledge which eachcamp had of every other member was most intimate

The Dissenters were further split up into two or three different sects, but the main sect was that of the Independents They, in fact, dominated every other There was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans had a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some reason or other the Independents were really the Dissenters, and until the ”cause” had dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to be found on Sunday in their -house in Water Lane

My predecessor had died in harness at the age of seventy-five I never knew him, but from all I could hear he ot older, however, he became feeble; and after a course of three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, what he had to say was so entirely anticipated by his congregation, that although they all ospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the fall, the atonement, and so forth, should continually be presented, and their minister also believed and acted implicitly upon the same theory, they fell away--so Independents about two miles off, and some to the Church, while a feent nowhere”

When I came I found that the deacons still remained true They were the skeleton; but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my first Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a building which would hold seven hundred These deacons were four in nue three miles distant Ever since he was a boy he had driven over to Water Lane on Sunday He and his faht their dinner with them, and ate it in the vestry; but they never stopped till the evening, because of the difficulty of getting hohts, and because they all went to bed in winter-ti and afternoon Mr Catfield--for that was his naave out the hynorant, never reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save Bell's Weekly Messenger Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond a few favourite chapters; and I aoes, the character so frequently drawn in roations is very rare At the same time Mr Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and in his as very pious I could never call him a hypocrite He was as sincere as he could be, and yet no religious expression of his was ever so sincere as thepleasure or pain

The second deacon, Mr Weeley, was, as he described himself, a builder and undertaker; more properly an undertaker and carpenter He was a thin, tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes He was entirely without energy of any kind, and always seemed oppressed by a world which was too ood deal for custom upon his chapel connection; and when the attendance at the chapel fell off, his trade fell off likewise, so that he had to compound with his creditors He was a ood or evil

The third deacon was Mr Snale, the draper When I first knew him he was about thirty-five He was sli a pair of little curly whiskers, and he was extremely neat He had a little voice too, rather squeaky, and the , noas if in a smile his thin little lips He kept the principal draper's shop in the town, and even Church people spent their enteel coreat red s outside hisMr Snale was married, had children, and was strictly proper But his way of talking to women and about them was more odious than the way of a debauchee He invariably called them ”the ladies,” or more exactly, ”the leedies”; and he hardly ever spoke to a ”leedy” without a smirk and some faint attempt at a joke

One of the custos

Once a hters drank tea with each other; the evening being ostensibly devoted to ave the entertainment for the month had to wait upon the company, and the minister was expected to read to theuest two or three times when Mrs

Snale was the Dorcas hostess We -room, which was over the shop, and looked out into the town market-place There was a round table in the middle of the room, at which Mrs Snale sat and made the tea Abundance of hot buttered toast and muffins were provided, which Mr Snale and a maid handed round to the party

Four pictures decorated the walls One hung over the mantelpiece It was a portrait in oils of Mr Snale, and opposite to it, on the other side, was a portrait of Mrs Snale Both were daubs, but curiously faithful in depicting as inals, Mr Snale's siether with the peculiarly hard, heavy sensuality of the eye in Mrs Snale, as large and full-faced, correct like Mr Snale, a enerosity, and cruel not with the ferocity of the tiger, but with the dull insensibility of a cartwheel, which will roll over a man's neck as easily as over a flint The third picture represented the descent of the Holy Ghost; a nu in a chamber, and each one with the flame of a candle on his head The fourth represented the last day The Son of God was in a chair surrounded by clouds, and beside Hi raves; some were half out of the earth, others three-parts out--the whole of the botto fro happy, butnaked

The first ti Mr Snale was reader, on the ground that I was a novice; and I was very glad to resign the task to him As the business in hand eek-day and secular, it was not considered necessary that the selected subjects should be religious; but as it was distinctly connected with the chapel, it was also considered that they should have a religious flavour Consequently the Bible was excluded, and so were books on topics altogether worldly Dorcas enerally, therefore, shut up to the denoazines Towards the end of the evening Mr Snale read the births, deaths, and ht to read thereed, with a fineness of tact which was very reht to read the the whole ti on conversation was not arrested, but was conducted in a kind of half whisper; and this was another reason why I exceedingly disliked to read, for I could never endure to speak if people did not listen

At half-past eight the as put away, and Mrs Snale went to the piano and played a hy first of all selected the hy over, he offered a short prayer, and the company separated Supper was not served, as it was found to be too great an expense The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort theentle-rooh it was shut, the gas was burning to enable the assistants to put away the goods which had been got out during the day

When it first became h no objection was raised at the tiot through a chapter or two, that he thought it would be better if it were discontinued ”Because, you know, Mr Rutherford,” he said, with his s leedies present, and perhaps, Mr Rutherford, a book with a ht be more suitable on such an occasion” What he meant I did not know, and how to find a book with a more requisite tone I did not know

However, the next tie Fox's Journal Mr Snale objected to this too It was ”hardly of a character adapted for social intercourse,” he thought; and furtherood man, and was a converted character, yet he did not, you know, Mr Rutherford, belong to us” So I was reduced to that class of literature which of all others I most aboious and sectarian gossip, religious novels designed to ion attractive, and other slip-slop of this kind I could not endure it, and was frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings

The rest of the sation was of no particular note As I have said before, it had greatly fallen away, and all who re to the chapel rather by force of habit than from any other reason The only exception was an old e about a mile out of the town They were pious in the purest sense of the word, suffering ned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness always apparent on their faces, like the cheerfulness of a white sky with a sun veiled by light and lofty clouds They were the daughters of a carriage-builder, who had left them a small annuity

Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered The moment I found myself inside it, I beca was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the sa had been preserved with such care that nothing looked old Yet the owners were not what is called old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superstitious worshi+ppers of order and neatness

I re in one afternoon when I was there They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of dirty footmarks all over the carpet, which the two ladies noticed at once

But it made no difference to the treativen to theone, the elder of ather up the dirt before it was trodden about

So she brought a dust-pan and brush (the little servant was out) and patiently swept the floor That was the ith them Did anyanybody, they i it with that silent proainst a wound, but the very next instant begins her work of protection and recovery

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 veryhts stirring in the tireatly admired Cowper, a poet who then did not much attract me