WARM BREAKFAST AND WARM HEARTS. 243 



been to an early daylight prayer-meeting, and some business had 

 detained him ; but his friends introduced each other to us, and 

 v/e went to breakfast without waiting for him. It was a good, 

 warm, respectable breakfast fit for a Christian. English break- 

 fasts in general are quite absurd ; not breakfasts at all, but just 

 aggravations of fasts, and likely to put a man in anything but a 

 Christian humor for his day's work. As for the better part of 

 the meal, see C.'s letter, (from which I here extract) : 



"I shall not soon forget those earnest, simple-hearted men. 

 In many circles one would be repelled by such constant use of 

 religious phrases, but in them it did not seem like cant at all 

 rather the usual expression with them of true feeling. It was a 

 company too well worth considering. Opposite me sat a middle- 

 aged gentleman, who had been a major-general in the East India 

 service, and who belonged to one of the first families in the king- 

 dom. Yet he had given up his commission and his position in 

 society for the sake of doing good as an humble Christian. His 

 half-pay, too, he had refused, believing it inconsistent for a re- 

 ligious man to receive money for services of such a nature. He 

 had been a scholar also, and had written a dictionary of the 

 Mahratta tongue. Besides him, there was a lieutenant in the 

 navy, who had thrown up his commission from similar religious 

 scruples, and a prominent surgeon of the city, devoted, like the 

 rest, to Christian efforts almost entirely. They had been to a 

 prayer-meeting, and the conversation, with the Bible open on the 

 table, commenced at once on a passage in John. It was beauti- 

 ful, the simple, natural way they all conversed of religious topics 

 no straining for sanctity, but easily and earnestly, as men 

 usually would speak of weighty political matters. 



" But, free as is the plan of these brethren, I am sorry to say 

 that in real liberality they do not go beyond most others. The 

 conversation during breakfast turned on the Roman Catholics. 



