THE COUNTRY SUNDAY. 59 
have perhaps been trained as missionaries, often dis- 
course of Buddha with a very long and unctuous ‘ Boo.’ 
The ancient Roman censor who tried by laws and 
persuasions to induce the inhabitants of Rome to marry, 
yet could not succeed in inducing them to submit to 
what they considered a sacrifice for the benefit of the 
state, would have been delighted with the marrying 
tendencies of the chapel people. A venerable old gen- 
tleman-——a great pillar of the body—after the decease of 
his first wife married her sister, and again, upon her re- 
moval, married his cook. Another great prop—elderly 
indeed, but still upright and iron-grey, a most powerfully 
made man, who always spoke as if his words were in- 
deed law—rule-of-thumb law—has married three sisters 
in succession, and has had offspring by all. Their exact 
degrees of consanguinity I cannot tell you, or whether 
they call each other brothers and sisters, or cousins. 
This is certain, however, that whether such marriages be 
legal or not, they are as such regarded and as such ac- 
cepted in every sense by the society to which these 
gentlemen belong. Another gentleman now has his 
fourth wife, and he, too, is a most strenuous believer, 
and not his bitterest enemy can rake up the smallest 
accusation against his character. He, too, is a strong 
and upright man, fully capable of another wife if time 
should chance to bring it about. Now, the odd part of 
it is that, having married four times, and each time in 
the same village, where all the families are more or less 
connected, he is more or less related to every single in- 
dividual in the parish. First, there are his own blood 
relations and his wives’ blood relations, and then there 
are their relations’ relations, and next his sons and 
daughters have married and introduced a fresh roll, 
and I really do not think either he or anybody else 
