“Ah, dear me: I wish _you_ would come to us instead. Our man is very unpopular; requires _so_ much in the way of improvements. Why, what do you think he did last March?” &c., &c. It was pleasant to think that on that summer day all my school managers were wandering about England, making the same complaint about me. It is a pleasant profession for a peaceably-minded man. If I were asked to state its principal charm, I should say it is Irresponsibility. The income is moderate, but sufficient and certain. In the dim and distant future looms a pension, assuring bread and butter. The standard of comfort, therefore, is assured: unfruitfulness of honest work does not threaten poverty; Patients, clients, customers, cannot leave one. But the chief comfort is that there is no personal worry. A doctor grieves that his patients die; a barrister gnashes his teeth at the blind stupidity of judges and juries, who heeded him not; a parish priest lies sleepless o’ nights, sorrowing for the wickedness of Crooked Court, notably for the backsliding of hopeful converts. But the entire collapse of the arithmetic in Crooked Court Board School would not deprive the “irresponsible, indolent reviewer” of a moment’s rest. The work is often very heavy, but it is not work that kills: it is worry. FOOTNOTES: [26] A colleague insists on a variant: “when John Gilpin’s _horse_ couldn’t.” CHAPTER XIX CHAUNTERS’ “I heard once more in college fanes The storms their high-built organs make, And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophets blazon’d on the panes.” _In Memoriam._ Without any choice of mine, except in one instance, it has happened that since I left school, in 1860, I have always lived in cathedral cities. Oxford, London, Bangor, Norwich, Chester, Manchester in turns have been my dwelling-places. The cathedral city aspect of London (the above-mentioned exception) is little considered: only of Chester and Norwich can it be said that the atmosphere is Close. There bishop, dean, and canon in residence are persons to be reckoned with. Even the minor canon, a young man who comes with a tenor or baritone voice, and goes away with a wife and a living, receives in many quarters the brevet rank of canon, and is a welcome guest if he can sing comic songs in the drawing-room.