290 The Pytchley Hunt, Past and Present. 



a God all the same." Tn point of lengtli too, lie never 

 forgot tlie merit that lies in a good fifteen minutes, nor 

 the rebuke incurred by a brother parson, who_, having 

 preached for forty minutes, said to a friend on leaving 

 church, '^Having slept all the time, you can't know much 

 of what my sermon was about." " Oh, yes, I do," was 

 the reply, '' it was about half an hour too long." It 

 would seem as if the clergy were peculiarly liable to 

 rebuffs — moral humiliations of the nature of those just 

 described. One of London's most popular and dis- 

 tinguished preachers, an Hon. and Rev. gentleman, 

 brother to a Cabinet Minister, on entering upon duties 

 to which he had recently been appointed, made it 

 known to his new parishioners that "he was at their 

 service at any hour by night as well as by day," and that 

 his only desire was that his own convenience should 

 not be a matter for consideration. Summoned out 

 of his bed at a late hour one winter night by an 

 old member of his flock, well known to him as a very 

 regular attendant at church, he was thus addressed : 

 " IVe sent for you, sir, as you desired, as for many 

 nights I have been unable to close my ej^es, and as I 

 have often had some nice sleeps during your sermons, I 

 thought that if you would be so kind as to read to me a 

 bit, I might go off for an hour or so."*^ This would seem 

 to be a sufficient lowering of any little pulpit or other 

 pride, but it scarcely can have touched the same point of 

 humiliation as when after a peculiarly affecting sermon 

 in a country church, the wife of the preacher, on seeing 

 an old man remaining in his seat long after the congrega- 

 tion had gone, thus addressed the lingerer : " Well, 

 John, I'm glad to see that instead of goiug out in a hurry 



