On the way home the subject of education could not be ignored. The archdeacon was none too pleased to learn that I did not think well of parochial schools, and insisted that "godless" schools were worse than none. He would not agree that dogmatic teaching might be dispensed with and yet character be built up. When I pointed out that Jews and Catholics made up a large part of our urban population, and, not unnaturally, the one objected to Christian and the other to Protestant teaching, he could only see how unfortunate it was that we had no Established Church! Once more I was impressed by the fact that no man is liberal all through! Though he had been in the "States," his journey had led him only to the South--and that, too, in the days of Reconstruction. He had never seen New York or Ohio or New England, so that I could not feel that he was to be blamed for thinking poorly of our school system. But he made one remark worth remembering, to see if he is a "seer" as well as a prophet, which latter he assuredly is. "You are doing the thing on the 'cheap.' You do not pay your teachers enough to make it worth while for men to make teaching a profession, and, as a result, not only the girls but the boys as well are for years under the influence of women. This is bad and cannot fail to affect the national character--as you will find if a great crisis were to come. It may, as I have heard it said, tend to 'refinement' of speech and manners, but the price is too high. It will make them effeminate, that is, sentimental, and sometimes hysterical. It is the manly virtues of endurance and disregard of trifles, which men alone can inculcate, which have made England what she is. Should a great war come--and I fear that cannot be long delayed--you will find your boys cannot bear the strain." I hope that, as Nehemiah liked to say, "It may be counted to me for righteousness" that I refrained from mentioning 1776, or 1812, or even the Civil War--the "Bloody Angle," and Pickett's charge at Gettysburg--for that might have raised the _Alabama_! In the evening I preached in the parish church--"the noblest parish church in England," I was told Ruskin called it. Well, the sermon was not worthy of the church. I don't know what was the matter. You know how such things go! One trouble was that, all the time I was speaking, I wished to say something else! Ruth haunted me! I could hear her whispering: "Better be dull and decent than 'start something'!" So I was dull! At nine o'clock we sat down to a supper of cold beef and bread and cheese, and mighty good they tasted. Now was not that a day? I asked the archdeacon if it had been an exceptional day. "Oh, no," he said, "I should say an average day. I often go to the town hall after evening service and speak to the men who do not care to come to church. 'Securalists,' they call themselves, and as they are almost sure to heckle one, it is generally interesting, and sometimes exhausting."