Most clergymen whom I have known divide their day very much in the same fashion. After breakfast they go into their study and write their sermon for two or three hours; then they go out and visit their sick or make other calls of duty for several hours. If they have a large parish, they probably came to it with the resolution that before dinner they should always have an hour's smart walk at least; but they soon find that duty encroaches on that hour, and finally eats it entirely up, and their duty calls are continued till it is time to return home to dinner. Don't you remember, my friend, how short a time that lonely meal lasted, and how very far from jovial the feast was? As for me, that I might rest my eyes from reading between dinner and tea (a thing much to be desired in the case of every scholar), I hardly ever, failed, save for a few weeks of midwinter, to go out in the twilight and have a walk--a solitary and very slow walk. My hours, you see, were highly unfashionable. I walked from half-past five to half-past six: that was my after-dinner walk. It was always the same. It looks somewhat dismal to recall. Do you ever find, in looking back at some great trial or mortification you have passed through, that you are pitying yourself as if you were another person? I do not mean to say that those walks were a trial. On the contrary, they were always an enjoyment--a subdued quiet enjoyment, as are the enjoyments of solitary folk. Still, now looking back, it seems to me as if I were watching some one else going out in the cold February twilight, and walking from half-past five to half-past six. I think I see a human being, wearing a very thick and rough great-coat, got for these walks, and never worn on any other occasion, walking very slowly, bearing an extremely thick oak walking-stick (I have it yet) by the shore of the bleak gray sea. Only on the beach did I ever bear that stick; and by many touches of the sand it gradually wore down till it became too short for use. I see the human being issuing from the door of a little parsonage (not the one where there are magnificent beeches and rich evergreens and climbing roses), and always waiting at the door for him there was a friendly dog, a terrier, with very short legs and a very long back, and shaggy to that degree that at a cursory glance it was difficult to decide which was his head and which his tail. Ah, poor old dog, you are grown very stiff and lazy now, and time has not mellowed your temper. Even then it was somewhat doubtful. Not that you ever offered to bite me; but it was most unlucky, and it looked most invidious, that occasion when you rushed out of the gate and severely tore the garments of the dissenting minister! But he was a worthy man: and I trust that he never supposed that upon that day you acted by my instigation. You were very active then; and so few faces did you see (though a considerable town was within a few hundred yards),