A further stage of eccentricity was reached when it became fashionable to emphasize the doctrine of original sin by affixing to the new-born child a Scripture name of ill-repute. The reader can have no conception how far this was carried. In the street Dinahs and Absaloms walked hand-in-hand to school; Ananiases and Sapphiras grovelled in the dirty courts and alleys; and Cains took Abels to pluck flowers in the rural lanes and meadows, without thoughts of fratricide. Archbishop Leighton, son of a much persecuted Presbyterian minister, had a sister Sapphira. The acme of eccentricity was reached in the case of _Milcom_ Groat, whose Christian (!) name was “The abomination of the children of Ammon.” It may be seen in the State Papers (Domestic). I am furnishing all these names hap-hazard from my notebooks. In the dame’s school the twelve patriarchs could all have answered to their names through their little red-cheeked representatives who lined the wall, unless, maybe, Simeon or Reuben stood on a separate seat with the dunce’s cap on! But the strangest freak of all is still to be recorded. We have all heard of Praise-God Barebones. Hume, in his History of England, asserts that his brother bore the long name of “If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-condemned Barebones.” What the historian adds to this I will not repeat, for fear of seeming irreverent. Many have supposed this to have been a case of mere exceptional eccentricity. Nothing of the kind. It was not an uncommon custom for a man or woman after conversion to reject with horror the pagan name of “Harry” or “Dick,” which their god-parents had imposed upon them, and be known henceforth as “Replenish,” or “Increase,” or “Abstinence,” or “Live-well.” Of course, if they married after this, they spared their children the necessity of any such alteration by furnishing them with personal appellations of this character at the outset.