parsonage when the poor rector came back to his home. It is easy for everybody else to look only at the ludicrous side, but the clerical sufferer has to bear the real bitterness of such an experience, and to him the mere damage to his property is the least part of the business. Everybody says sulkily, “Why were we left to such a man as that?” For the country parson has to answer for all the sins and short-comings of those whom he leaves to represent himself; all their indiscretions, their untidiness, their careless reading, their bad preaching, their irreverence or their foolery, their timidity or their violence, their ignorance or their escapades. One man is horribly afraid of catching the measles; another “has never been accustomed to cows” and will not go where they are; a third is a woman-hater, and week by week bawls out strong language against the other sex, beginning with Eden and ending with Babylon. The absentee returns to find everything has been turned topsy-turvy. The _locum tenens_ has set every one by the ears, altered the times of service, broken your pony’s knees, had your dog poisoned for howling at the moon, or kept a monkey in your drawing-room. People outside laugh, but when you are the sufferer, and the conviction is forced upon you that harm has been done which you cannot hope to see repaired, you are not so likely to laugh as to do the other thing. Shall I go on to dwell upon the aggrieved parishioner, the amenities of the School Board, the anxieties of the school treat, the scenes at the meetings of the Poor-law guardians, the faithful laity who come to expostulate, to ask your views and to set you right? Shall I? Shall I dwell upon the occasional sermons which some delegate from some society comes and fulminates against you and your people? Nay! Silence on some parts of our experience is golden. * * * * * When we have said all that need be said about the minor vexations and worries which are incident to the country parson’s life, and which, like all men who live in isolation, he is apt to exaggerate, there is something still behind it all which only a few feel to be an evil at all, and which those who do feel, for many good reasons, are shy of speaking about; partly because they know it to be incurable, partly because if they do touch upon it they are likely to be tabulated among the dissatisfied, or are credited with unworthy motives which they know in their hearts that they are not swayed by.