88 A SPRING HERESY 



well-doing. Seven o'clock devotions were a very 

 uncertain fixture by the bell. But the children of 

 this world altered that. The buzzer brought 

 commercial punctuality to the correction of spiritual 

 laxity. I used at first to detest that bell as a 

 monotonous innovation ; but when the buzzer began 

 to bully it into punctuality, I sided with the bell. In 

 my mind I could see the bell-ringer tearing down, 

 half-dressed, to defy the powers of this world and 

 punctuate the sordid droning of the buzzer by his 

 bell-intoned profession of Trinitarian faith. With 

 every desire to recognise the astringent properties 

 of commercial punctuality, and a conviction that but 

 for the buzzer the bell would become a backslider 

 and a public scandal to the faithful, I do not like 

 the buzzer ; I do not like the enormous works ; I do 

 not like the growing town on the other side of the 

 village : I have never been there ; I shall never go ; 

 I shall keep to the historic landmarks ; I shall hold 

 by the old village. 



I was early abroad that first spring morning, the 

 opening of the seventh day of continuous frost and 

 fog a white, even fog, slowly disengaging itself, as 

 it seemed, like the departing spirit from the stark 

 body of Nature. I set out punctually at the moment 

 when the sun was timed to rise. It was reported to 

 have been seen the day before from the high Peak 

 district in Derbyshire ; also from the extreme corner 

 of Kent. Elsewhere for a week, " there had been 

 no day." I was far enough from any such points of 

 vantage in a horizontal direction, but probably not 

 much more than a hundred feet from some aerial spot 

 to which, but for this ponderable body, I might have 



