So Dr. Dayton was invited to come over and take the rectorship of the Church of the Advent. IX THE MAN BLIND FROM BIRTH IT seemed to Bishop Caiaphas that the new rector of the Church of the Advent was disposed to take on himself almost over-zealously the office of a new broom, and to sweep out the corners of the parish so cleanly and so thoroughly that even many of the little pet negligences of his own were likely to be cleared away with other things that could be better spared. There was, for instance, a poor family in the parish named Kettle. It consisted of a father, a mother, and a blind son. The father, Joseph Kettle, had been a cobbler by trade, but he had become almost completely crippled by rheumatism. The wife, Martha Kettle, Bishop Caiaphas had every reason to think, was a very industrious, worthy, honest woman. She was a particular pensioner of Mrs. Caiaphas's, who used to give the poor woman her cast-off dresses. In these dresses Martha always looked the perfection of neatness and respectability, and Mrs. Caiaphas felt the pleasantness of doing a worthy charity in giving away her cast-off garments to one who looked so well in them. Martha Kettle used to do the greater part of the washing and the finer laundry work for the rectory, and, altogether, the Kettles were quite a part of the family dependants. The only apparent blot upon the otherwise fair surface of respectability of the Kettle family was the son of this worthy pair, one Tom Kettle, who had been blind from his birth. He was thoroughly bad. Why the children of apparently respectable poor people so often degenerate into that class of the poor who are not respectable is one of the mysteries of that Providence that so arranges these factors of its divine paradox. The sons of rich people oftentimes fall away from grace, but they are rarely allowed to be altogether lost, no matter how dissipated they may become. The sons of poor people, when they fall away from grace, do generally go altogether to the bad.