ultra-Protestant appeases for the moment her wrath against the choir surplices. But the occasional screw of the monthly meeting is as nothing to the daily pressure applied by the individual District Visitor. At the bottom of every alley the vicar runs up against a parochial censor. The "five minutes' conversation" which the District Visitor expects as the reward of her benevolence becomes a perpetual trickle of advice, remonstrance, and even reproof. A strong-minded parson of course soon makes himself master of his District Visitors, but the ordinary vicar generally feels that his District Visitors are masters of him. The harm that comes of this feminine despotism is the feminine impress it leaves on the whole aspect of the parish. Manly preaching disappears before the disappointed faces the preacher encounters on Monday. A policy of expedients and evasions takes the place of any straightforward attempt to meet or denounce local evils. The vicar's time and energy are frittered away on a thousand little jealousies and envyings, his temper is tried in humouring one person and conciliating another, he learns to be cautious and reserved and diplomatic, to drop hints and suggestions, to become in a word the first District Visitor of his parish. He flies to his wife for protection, and finds in her the most effective buffer against parochial collisions. Greek meets Greek when the vicar's wife meets the District Visitor. But the vicar himself sinks into a parochial nobody, a being as sacred and as powerless as the Lama of Thibet.