I don't like Revivalism. A couple of preachers came to our village when I was a lad, and for a month I thought of nothing but hell. "Only believe!" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other one had a shorter salutation: "Glory!" he shouted at you fiercely. Incidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they departed. And the young women who had stood up to give their "Testimony" were back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks. Lizzie Jane Gunn was a typical convert. Lizzie Jane used to describe the night of her testimony-giving thus:--"Mind you, Aw was gaein' alang the road, and Aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and Aw was by ma leensome. Weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand, and Aw thocht that it was a message frae the Loard; so Aw just grippit ma hand ticht, an' Aw didna look to see fat it wuz. Fan Aw got hame Aw lookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button aff ma jaicket!" I have no sympathy with all this "saving" business. It's a cowardly selfish religion that makes people so anxious about their tuppence-ha'penny souls. When I think of all the illiterate lay preachers I have listened to I feel like little Willie at the Sunday School. "Hands up all those who would like to go to Heaven!" said the teacher. Willie alone did not put his hand up. "What! Mean to tell me, Willie, that you don't want to go to Heaven?" Willie jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the others. "No bloomin' fear," he muttered, "not if that crowd's goin'." Shelley says that "most wretched men are cradled into poetry through wrong." I think that most wretched preachers are cradled into preaching through conceit. It is thrilling to have an audience hang upon your words; we all like the limelight. Usually we have to master a stiff part before we can face the audience. Preaching needs no preparation, no thinking, no merit; all you do is to stand up and say: "Deara friendsa, when I was in the jimmynasium at Peebles, a fellow lodger of mine blasphemeda. From that daya, deara friendsa, that son of the devila nevera prospereda. O, friendsa! If you could only looka into your evila heartsa...." I note that when Revivalists come to a village the so-called village lunatic is always among the first to give his testimony. Willie Baffers has been whistling _Life, Life, Eternal Life_ all the week, but I was glad to note that he was back to _Stop yer Ticklin', Jock_, to-night. * * * I have introduced two new text-books--_Secret Remedies_, and _More Secret Remedies_. These books are published by the British Medical Association at a shilling each, and they give the ingredients and cost of popular patent medicines.