‘Actresses,’ continued the Colonel’s lady, ‘are not particular sort of people, and newspaper writers are not much better, I believe. I can’t think how old county families can be civil to them. In my young days such an idea would have been scouted, and I must say then they knew their place. My papa helped the local printer to start a paper on condition that it was to support Church and State. Occasionally my papa had the man up in the Castle, and would sit down to a bottle of port with him, but he never took any notice of him elsewhere, nor ever introduced him to his family. I believe the man was a very respectable tradesman. He was regular in his attendance at church, and always stood by our family in election contests; but the modern literary man gives himself the most ridiculous airs, fancies he is a genius because he can scribble, and that he can wield the destinies of the nation because he is connected with some low paper. I hear he belongs to clubs, and goes into society just as if he were a gentleman. Every time,’ added the lady piteously, ‘every time that I take up an English newspaper, I see the country going to the bad, the people more intolerant of good government, the upper classes more careless as to the future, recklessly acting in accordance with the motto, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The Sunday is desecrated by all classes, and the Lord will have no pity in the day of His wrath for Sabbath-breakers. The philosophers are in favour of Godless education, and now they tell me there are people who argue that Atheists have a right to sit in a Christian Parliament. Oh dear! the vials of God’s wrath will soon be flung down upon that unhappy country. The signs of the times tell us that we have reached the beginning of the end. There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the day of the Lord shall come.’ The gallant Colonel was accustomed to that sort of thing, and took it calmly. Whether he believed what his wife said I don’t know. He always acted as if he did; never contradicted her, as he had found that to be no use; attended her to church, sat out with well-bred polish the dreary minutes devoted to staring the domestics out of countenance called family prayers. He was always ready at his wife’s bidding to attend Bible-readings for the select few, and when joked on the subject by his chums, if he had any at his club, never gave railing for railing, but took it as if it was a cross laid on him to bear.