And now it is high time that I returned from my political reminiscences to the chronicle of our simple life at Greylands. After all, what historians will value (if they value anything!) in such a book as this is not the record of great public events, even when these can be narrated by one who took part in them; but the story of how we lived, what we thought about, what were our daily cares and interests. One of the happiest recollections I have of those days is that of our iron wedding in ’54. It was not at that time customary to hold the religious ceremony over again, with a formal renewal of consent; but we made merry on the occasion, entertained our friends, and, of course, received presents. Our friends were extremely generous on this occasion, and I was especially touched by the letter with which Archie Lock enclosed his cheque: “Really, you are one of the most economical friends I have in the way of wedding presents! Look at Cynthia Stockdale[11] now—she gets married so often that I’m thinking of making out a banker’s order for her.” Still more did I appreciate a flitch of bacon, bought and addressed at Dunmow, over the Essex border, “with respectful compts from J. Hodges.” The accommodation at Greylands could be regal when it liked, and we managed to put up no less than fifteen guests for the ceremony. Mrs. Rowlands, rather sobered now by her experiences in a violent campaign against the daily nearing menace of Disestablishment, had still enough of her old spirit left to compose a special form of service for the occasion. It began, I need hardly say, with “O God, our help in ages past,” as a tribute to the long lease we had had of married life: then there was a Psalm or two appropriate to extreme old age; then it strayed off (as far as I could make out) into the Baptism of Adults and the Form of Prayer to be used at Sea; then we had the prayer for the High Court of Parliament. Then there was “Peace, perfect peace,” then an extremely embarrassing sermon from Mr. Rowlands, who talked of our marriage as if it was the one fixed landmark in a world of continual change and progress; then a translation of “Ein feste Burg” in which the words “And though they take our life, Goods, honour, children, wife, Yet is their profit small” struck one as hardly felicitous. And finally the _Te Deum_, with what Mrs. Rowlands called “the characteristically mediæval parts” left out. Juliet Savage asked Mrs. Rowlands whether she couldn’t have put in “My old Dutch,” but this was lost on her—Mrs. Rowlands did not read nineteenth century literature.