THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 57 
creeturs.’ Or possibly the pastor himself may be over- 
heard discoursing to a bullet-headed woman, with one 
finger on the palm of his other hand, ‘ That's their serpen- 
tine way; that’s their subtlety ; that’s their casuistry ; 
which arguments you may imagine to refer, as your fancy 
pleases, to the village curate, or the tonsured priest of 
the monastery over the hill. For the tonsured priest, 
and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and 
the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power 
indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal 
and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his 
good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, 
and grows less and less between these millstones till he 
approaches the vanishing-point. The Roman has the 
broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the 
chapel has the common people, and the farmers are 
banding together not to pay tithes. So that his whole 
soul may well go forth in the apostrophe, ‘Good Lord, 
deliver us !’ 
There is no man so feasted as the chapel pastor. 
His tall and yet rotund body and his broad red face 
might easily be mistaken for the outward man of a sturdy 
farmer, and he likes his pipe and glass. He dines every 
Sunday, and at least once a week besides, at the house 
of one of his stoutest upholders. It is said that at such 
a dinner, after a large plateful of black currant pudding, 
finding there was still some juice left, he lifted the plate 
to his mouth and carefully licked it all round; the 
hostess hastened to offer a spoon, but he declined, 
thinking that was much the best way to gather up the 
essence of the fruit. So simple were his manners, he 
needed no spoon; and, indeed, if we look back, the 
apostles managed without forks, and put their fingers in 
the dish. After dinner the cognac bottle is produced, 
