"A thousand times, and in all things. In addition to having a most pious and sincere pastor, _we_ have an agreeable and well-bred neighbour, from whose mouth, in the five years that he has dwelt here, I have not heard a syllable at the expense of a single fellow-creature. You know how it is apt to be with the other clergy and ours, in the country--for ever at swords' points; and if not actually quarrelling, keeping up a hollow peace." "That is only too true--or used to be true, before I went abroad." "And it is so now, elsewhere, I'll answer for it, though it be so no longer here. Mr. Warren and Mr. Peck seem to live on perfectly amicable terms, though as little alike at bottom as fire and water." "By the way, how do the clergy of the different sects, up and down the country, behave on the subject of anti-rent?" "I can answer only from what I hear, with the exception of Mr. Warren's course. _He_ has preached two or three plain and severe sermons on the duty of honesty in our worldly transactions, one of which was from the tenth commandment. Of course he said nothing of the particular trouble, but everybody must have made the necessary application of the home-truths he uttered. I question if another voice has been raised, far and near, on the subject, although I have heard Mr. Warren say the movement threatens more to demoralize New York than anything that has happened in his time." "And the man down at the village?" "Oh, he goes, of course, with the majority. When was one of that set ever known to oppose his parish, in anything?" "And Mary is as sound and as high-principled as her father?" "Quite so; though there has been a good deal said about the necessity of Mr. Warren's removing, and giving up St. Andrew's, since he preached against covetousness. All the anti-renters say, I hear, that they know he meant _them_; and that they won't put up with it." "I dare say; each one fancying he was almost called out by name: that is the way, when conscience works." "I should be very, very sorry to part with Mary; and almost as much so to part with her father. There is one thing, however, that Mr. Warren himself thinks we had better have done, Hugh; and that is to take down the canopy from over our pew. You can have no notion of the noise that foolish canopy is making up and down the country." "I shall _not_ take it down. It is my property, and there it shall remain. As for the canopy, it was a wrong distinction to place in a church, I am willing to allow; but it never gave offence until it has been thought that a cry against it would help to rob me of my lands at half price, or at no price at all, as it may happen." "All that may be true; but if improper for a church, why keep it?"