"Psychic phenomena, indeed!" the worthy lady would snort. "Don't talk to me about such rubbish! It's just as bad as the mediums and the slate writers." "Dear madam," pleaded the gentle voice of the enamoured poet, "do not, I pray you, confound these great mysteries with the strain of Human Error running through their attempted explanation--an explanation only intended to bring them down to the level of our material understandings. Let me persuade you to read that most exquisite poem `The Light of Asia.'" "Light of your grandmother!" exclaimed Mrs Masterman with sublime contempt. "I fear," lamented the poet, "it never was granted to her. She lived in a benighted age. She had not our privileges." "And a very good thing too," said the purple-visaged dowager wrathfully. "Privileges indeed! Fine privileges, if honest, sober-minded Christians are to learn the way to Heaven from heathens and idolaters. You are all just as bad as those people Saint Paul speaks of, who were always running after some new thing. I'm happy to say my Bible and my Church are good enough for me. I don't want a new religion at my time of life." "The teachers in the Church are so very frequently our intellectual inferiors," murmured the poet, "that they only excite commiseration, or amusement." "Well, I suppose they know their business," snapped Mrs Masterman, "I'm sure no man would go into the Church if he didn't feel a call, and the fact of his doing so and taking up that life should be enough to prevent any right-minded person from ridiculing mere human frailties of voice and manner and appearance." "Unfortunately," murmured the poet, "I have been at college with several embryo parsons. But to the best of my recollection the only `special' call they had for the _office_ was the call of some earthly relative or friend who had a comfortable living at his disposal. It seems to me--I may be wrong, of course--but it really does seem to me that we have quite reversed the old order of religious ministration. At first every worldly consideration, even the necessaries of life, were given up by those who undertook the office. Now, the office is only undertaken _for_ the worldly considerations, and the necessities of life--" "Oh," cried Mrs Masterman, losing her temper, which even at the best of times was exceedingly hard to keep. "You go off, young man, to your `Lights of Asia,' and all your other idolatrous rubbish. The truth is this foreign woman has bewitched you all, and will end in making you heathens like herself. Thank goodness I've too much sense to listen to her. It's my belief she'll turn out a murderess, or a fire worshipper, or something of that sort before we've seen the last of her. I don't like mysterious persons! If she hadn't had big eyes, and a straight nose, and a figure like those Venuses and creatures who hold the lamps in the corridors, no one here would have troubled their heads about her!"