“When one who holds communion with the skies, Has filled his urn where the pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, ’Tis even as if an angel shook his wings; Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide, And tells us where his treasure is supplied.” _Cowper._ In addition to the Sunday services conducted by local preachers, and a fortnightly Thursday meeting, when the Nestletonian Methodists were favoured with a sermon from one of the “itinerants,” two weekly class-meetings were held, the one in Adam Olliver’s cottage, the other in the kitchen of Nathan Blyth. In each case the owner of the place of rendezvous was the “leader” of the little band which gathered from week to week to give and obtain mutual cheer and encouragement in the Christian life. Old Adam’s class consisted chiefly of the older members of society, and numbered a dozen or fourteen men and women who were “asking their way to Zion with their faces thitherward.” The lowly and tidy little room was always made as neat as a new pin by the diligent Judith for the class-meetings, though that state of things was by no means exceptional; for Judith, like most of the East Yorkshire peasantry, prided herself on the cleanliness of her cosy cottage. A strip or two of carpet was laid here and there upon the well-washed brick floor. A hearthrug made of short strips of cloth, knitted in many colours and neat of pattern, lay upon the white hearthstone, on the borders of which, uncovered by the rug, a little red sand was strewn, to facilitate future sweeping operations, and to give a looser tenancy to dirt. The grate, hob, and oven were brightly polished with black-lead, and the iron bar, and “reckon” over the fire-place, used for suspending culinary pot and kettle, were as bright as burnished steel. Half a dozen wooden chairs made of birch or ashwood, a small old-fashioned “dresser” and platerack, a clock of contemporary age, whose long case stood bolt upright against the wall, and had had to suffer partial decapitation to make room for it underneath the joists of the boarded chamber floor, an odd-looking corner cupboard perched more than half-way up an angle of the room, and a little round table covered with glazed American cloth, completed the furniture. Not quite, though, for there were two old-fashioned arm-chairs, with spindled backs, from which the green paint was largely worn away by constant use, and two or three odd little Scripture prints and an antique “sampler” adorned the whitewashed walls. On class-meeting nights, the sitting accommodation was increased by the introduction of two little wooden forms of Adam’s own construction, which at other seasons were set up on end in the little back kitchen to be out of the way. A well-worn Bible and the ubiquitous Wesleyan hymn-book were laid upon the table, and Adam’s spectacles, in a wooden case, were placed by their side, as regularly as Wednesday night came round.