This girl, and a certain Pugsley, were my morbid aversions of those days. The reverend Mr Pugsley had been translated--through the instrumentality of Lord Skene and the influence of his lady--from a suburban cure to the living of St Luke’s, Market Grazing. He had belonged, I believe, to the “Clapham Sect,” or what, in his time, constituted the remnants of that dour and depressing body. Its spirit, indeed, still so dwelt in him, morally and physically--in his narrow convictions, as in his dismal dyspeptic face, sloping shoulders, and general joyless aspect--that a question as to his well-being might at any time have been answered by him in the words of the notorious Dr Jekyll, “I am very low, Utterson; very low.” Very low a churchman he was, in fact; so low that he crawled, symbolically, in the dust, and called himself a worm. I never disputed that half so much as his calling me one. But his professional terminology gathered no inspiration with the years, and its eternal limitations were, it seemed, satisfying to Lady Skene, who was his main prop and patroness. It began with wrath and the blood of lambs, and foundered in mud among worms and serpents. The principle of pre-election is very comforting to one’s sense of moral responsibility. It narrows it to the consideration of that small body, which, after all, it need not consider, since it is booked for Paradise. It seems a cruelty of supererogation to taunt the unelect with their doom. But Mr Pugsley gave me little hope. I was a worm, a brand; “baptised in fire that I might inherit ever-lasting fire.” I suppose that very early I showed a scorn of his nonsense; and that put his spiritual back up. Moreover I parodied him; and no man, though a priest, likes to be laughed at for his convictions. Sir Maurice Carnac, before mentioned, happened to alight on the stuff without my knowledge; and he made a huge spluttering joke of it. Here it is, founded on a Pugsleyite hymn: “When with the heavenly hosts I sit down Sure of my dinner and decked with my crown, O what a blessing and O what a grace To think that my faith has reserved me this place! Though enough is as good as a feast, Having conquered the gluttonous beast, As elect I may stuff on more than enough, And not be disturbed in the least. “When I am safe on the infinite shore, Free to do naught, if I like, but adore, O what a blessing and O what a good To think I may temper the praise to the mood! For enough is as good as a feast, In this limited transit at least; And I feel more and more that the thing that’s a bore In the West, might be so in the East. “To sleep or to venture, to feast or to fast; No excess possible, boredom, nor caste-- O what a blessing and O what a bliss If Faith at discretion should bring me to this! No enough that’s as good as a feast, Nor nausea rising like yeast; But, free as the air to praise or to pair, Quit of the doctor and priest!”