The Life of a Great Sportsman 



brother Maunsell's character, it is not the least, that after the 

 nauseous dose of so-called religion he was subjected to as a 

 child, he retained to the last a great and ever-growing respect 

 for the Church and her service. To churchgoers nowadays, 

 even in very remote country districts, it seems incredible, that 

 as late as the middle of the last century such a caricature of 

 what Church worship ought to be certainly existed. 



Oh ! the dreariness of the long, droned-out prayers ! The 

 appalling length of the nasal abomination of the drawled-out 

 singing by the village school children, without even the modest 

 harmonium to keep them in tune ! Well might we children 

 come to the conclusion that if this were the prototype of 

 Heaven, and Heaven consisted entirely of Sunday, we should 

 much prefer everlasting week-days amongst the, perhaps, more 

 wicked, but certainly more sympathetic community. 



Looking back through the long vista of years, one can only 

 think that the then Vicar of Great Limber found peace for his 

 own conscience in boring himself as well as his congregation 

 profoundly once a week, thus doing penance for the fact that 

 he absented himself from his parish most week-days, and, 

 instead of visiting his parishioners, found more recreation in 

 operations on the London Stock Exchange. 



Leaving the church and coming back to the main road, 

 you pass the rectory on your left, screened from the road by 

 a wall, to pass which, to us children, was always a sensational 

 experience, for it was there our ogre of Sunday dwelt, and we 

 often longed to see what he looked like out of church. 



From this, the road bears slightly to the left, and you come 

 to the forge. In Maunsell's racing days the owner of the 

 forge, Grimbleby by name, excelled in all matters of shoeing, 

 in fact, was a perfect master of his craft. No horse was too 

 vicious for him to tackle, no equine foot too difficult for him 



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