Now, here clearly was an innovation. Wasn't this intolerable? Who ever heard the like? Where would all this stop? Why, the parish is already going to the dogs! He has played right into my hands. Yes? Stop the Rosary? Prevent the little children from singing the praises of their Mother and Queen? I thought I saw the face of the Queen Mother looking at me from the skies; and I heard a voice saying, prophetically: "Ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos, ut destruas inimicum et ultorem." Clearly, the fates are against me. "Father Letheby was not at home, but would be back presently. Would I take a chair and wait for a few moments?" I sat down in a comfortable arm-chair lined with the soft rug that first elicited my housekeeper's admiration. I looked around. Books were strewn here and there, but there was no slovenliness or untidiness; and, ha! there were the first signs of work on the white sheets of manuscript paper. I wonder what is he writing about. It is not quite honorable, but as I am on the war path, perhaps I could get here a pretext for scalping him. Notes! "November 1. Dipped into several numbers of _Cornhill Magazine_. Specially pleased with an article on 'Wordsworth's Ethics,' in the August number, 1876. "November 2. Read over Sir J. Taylor's poems, principally 'Philip van Artevelde,' 'Isaac Comnenus,' 'Edwin the Fair,' the 'Eve of the Conquest.' "Comnenus.--Not much the doubt Comnenus would stand well with times to come, Were there the hand to write his threnody, Yet is he in sad truth a faulty man. * * * * * But be it said he had this honesty, That, undesirous of a false renown, He ever wished to pass for what he was, One that swerved much, and oft, but being still Deliberately bent upon the right, Had kept it in the main; one that much loved Whate'er in man is worthy high respect, And in his soul devoutly did aspire To be it all: yet felt from time to time The littleness that clings to what is human, And suffered from the shame of having felt it." "Humph! This is advanced," I thought. "I wonder does he feel like Comnenus? It is a noble portrait, and well worthy imitation." Just then he came in. After the usual greetings he exclaimed, in a tone of high delight:-- "Look here, Father, here's a delicious tit-bit. Confess you never read such a piece of sublime self-conceit before." He took up a review that was lying open on the desk, and read this:--