DRIVE A NAIL WHERE IT WILL GO. 49 



(1) to sit and gaze humbly at the feet of a pale-faced curate 

 who was wont to plunge into unfathomable and incom- 

 prehensible depths of theology, from which he emerged in 

 a half-drowned condition at the end of his sermon; (2) to 

 display some new hat or garment to the wondering gaze of 

 the less fortunate young ladies at the rival establishments of 

 Earl and Drake, Thompson, or Lamming. 



But by degrees Jabez's influence began to be felt. Lizzie 

 gave up the theology-stricken curate; she attended Jabez's 

 own particular chapel ; she discarded her gay feathers, 

 ribbons, and other decorations that were once things of 

 beauty and joys for a season, i.e. till the young ladies at the 

 rival establishments " went one better " ; she did not go to 

 the circus as usual when it paid its annual visit, nor was she 

 once seen in the market place among " the fun of the fair " 

 at the Feast. Her intimates fancied she must be sickening 

 for an illness or drifting towards insanity ; while the rival 

 establishments' young ladies set it down to a feeling of 

 hopelessness brought on by her inability to out- do them in 

 the competition for high-class female self-decoration. By 

 the time Lizzie Holland had become Lizzie Morgan 

 Jabez's principles had so permeated her system that she 

 was almost a second edition of Jabez ; but, like most 

 absorbent bodies, Mrs. Morgan's system required an occa- 

 sional replenishing from her husband's inexhaustible store 

 of religious doctrine, and any symptoms of hankering after 

 the flesh-pots of old, in the shape of gay ribbons or circuses, 

 were treated in the most drastic form. Given parents so 

 steeped to the lips in self-righteousness, it is all the more 

 remarkable that their only son, William, should have de- 

 veloped a character so entirely antagonistic. 



With sorrow in their hearts they watched the growing up 

 of their young hopeful; and why the child should develop 

 a disposition so different to their own they could not for the 



D 



