O stars and garters! how bored I am by this trite, moralizing way of regarding natural phenomena--this crying of vanity on the beautiful manifestation of mechanical forces. This desire of mine to appear out of doors in appropriate apparel, if it can thus defy and overcome the law of gravitation--if it can lift twelve stone of matter thirty or forty feet above the earth's surface; if it can do this every day, and several times a day, and never get out of order, is it not as remarkable and convenient in the house as a hydraulic lift? _The Danger of Going to Church_ As I came away from the Evening Service, walking home from that Sabbath adventure, some neighbours of mine passed me in their motor laughing. Were they laughing at me? I wondered uneasily; and as I sauntered across the fields I vaguely cursed those misbelievers, remembering some maledictions from the Prophets, and from the Psalms we had sung that evening. Yes, yes, their eyes should be darkened, and their lying lips put to silence. They should be smitten with the botch of Egypt, and a sore botch in the legs that cannot be healed. All the teeth should be broken in the mouths of those bloody men and daughters of backsliding; their faces should become as flames, and their heads be made utterly bald. Their little ones should be dashed to pieces before their eyes, and brimstone scattered upon their habitations. They should be led away with their buttocks uncovered; they should stagger to and fro as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. But as for the Righteous Man who kept his Sabbaths, his should be the blessings of those who walk in the right way. "These blessings"--the words came back to me from the Evening Lesson--"these blessings shall come upon thee and overtake thee." And suddenly, in the mild summer air, it seemed as if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of the Old Testament were actually rushing after me. From the hot, remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were coming to reward me with benedictions for which I had not bargained. Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me, he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My barns should burst their doors with plenty, and all my paths drop fatness. My face should be smeared with the oil of rejoicing; all my household and the beasts of my household should beget and bear increase; and as for the fruit of my own loins, it should be for multitude as the sands of the sea and as the stars of heaven. My sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters to the third and fourth generation, should rise up and call me blessed. My feet should be dipped in butter, and my eyes stand out with fatness; I should flourish as the Cedar of Lebanon that bringeth forth fruit in old age.