"It's not his _metier_, Doctor. He hasn't the faculty of really understanding peasants, and I think he is quite right in what he is doing. And, of course, from a selfish point of view, I am glad. I have refused two college livings to stay on here. In all probability I shall stay here till I die. O'Donnell does a great work for Temperance all over England--though doubtless you know more about that than I do." "Er, yes," Morton Sims replied, though without any marked enthusiasm. "O'Donnell is very eloquent, and no doubt does good. My dear old friend, Bishop Moultrie, in Norfolk here is most enthusiastic about his work. I like O'Donnell, he's sincere. But I belong to the scientific party, and while I welcome anything that really tends to stem inebriety, I believe that O'Donnell and Moultrie and all of them are on the wrong tack entirely." "I know very little about the modern temperance movement in any direction," said Mr. Medley with a certain dryness. "Blue Ribbons and Bands of Hope are all very well, I suppose, but there is such a tendency nowadays among Non-conformists and the extreme evangelical party to exalt abstinence from alcohol into the one thing necessary to salvation, that I keep out of it all as much as I can. I like my glass of port, and I don't mean to give it up!" Morton Sims laughed. "It doesn't do you the least good really," he said, laughing. "I could prove to you in five minutes, and with entire certainty, that your single glass of port is bad, even for you! But I quite agree with your attitude towards all the religious emotionalism that is worked up. The drunkard who turns to religion simply manifests the class of ideas, which is one of the features of the epileptic temperament. It is a confession of ineptitude, and a recourse to a means of salvation from a condition which is too hard for him to bear. That is to say, Fear is at the bottom of his new convictions!" Certainly Medley was not particularly sympathetic to the modern Temperance movement among religious people. Perhaps Mr. O'Donnell's somewhat vociferous enthusiasm had something to do with it. But on the other hand, he was very far from accepting such a cold scientific doctrine as this. He knew that the Holy Spirit does not always work through fear. But like the wise and quiet-minded man that he was, he forbore argument and listened with intellectual pleasure to the views of his new friend. "I know," he said, with a courtly hint of deference in his voice, that became him very well, "of your position in the ranks of those who are fighting Intemperance. But, and you must pardon the ignorance of a country priest who is quite out of all 'movements,' I don't know anything of your standpoint. What is your remedy, Dr. Morton Sims?" The great man smiled inwardly.