At half-past ten o'clock, he sighed, realising that a most distasteful duty had to be done, and prepared to leave the house. Before he left his study, he knelt down and prayed for a blessing in his mission. He always prayed before any event of any importance in life. An enormous number of people still do, and it is a very great pity that some people do not believe or realise the fact. Prayer is not the anachronism many publicists would have us believe. If among all classes, Christians by open profession, and people who make no profession at all, save only contempt for Christianity, a census of prayers prayed during one day could be taken, the result would be very remarkable indeed. It would certainly startle the rationalists. Statistics show that every second a child is born and a person dies. It is during the approach of such occasions that even people who call themselves "atheists" generally pray. Ask hospital nurses, doctors, or parish priests! There is no greater humbug than the pretence that prayer as a general necessity and practice is dead. There is more irreligion visible to-day than at any other time in English history, perhaps. But that does not mean that people do not pray. The majority live a jolly, godless life till they are frightened. Then they pray. The minority pray always. Mr. Carr left his house with a more vigorous step after his petition. As so many folk know, the help that comes from prayer is only self-hypnotism--of course. But it is certainly odd what power some of the least gifted and most ordinary people have of this self-hypnotism. One had always thought it rather a cryptic science, the literature of India, for example, regarding it as a supreme achievement. But it must be very simple after all! And if the help that comes to the human heart after prayer _is_ a result of this magnetic power, all we can say is that in the depths of a Whitechapel slum, the outcast, forgotten, and oppressed have each and all the most remarkable, delicate, and cultured temperaments, not in the least seared or spoilt by privation and want. The only point that one quite fails to understand is, why are the leading reviews and scientific publications still discussing this art, or talent, as something rare, abnormal, and as yet little understood? Mr. Carr drew near to "Luther Lodge." "Balmoral" had been deserted for some time by the Hamlyn family, who very properly felt that it was beneath the dignity of its celebrated head, and would also be harmful to the glorious Protestant cause, if they remained among the undistinguished inhabitants of Beatrice Villas.