'Pardon me, sir, if I cannot speak plainly; but are there not temptations enough here in England that you must go to waste all your gifts, your scholarship, and your rank, far away there out of the sound of a church-going bell? I don't deny it's a great temptation. I have read of Norway wonders in a book of one Miss Martineau, with a strange name.' 'Feats on the Fiord?' 'That's it, sir. Her books are grand books to set one a-thinking; but she don't seem to see the Lord in all things, does she, sir?' Lancelot parried the question. 'You are wandering a little from the point.' 'So I am, and thank you for the rebuke. There's where I find you scholars have the advantage of us poor fellows, who pick up knowledge as we can. Your book-learning makes you stick to the point so much better. You are taught how to think. After all--God forgive me if I'm wrong! but I sometimes think that there must be more good in that human wisdom, and philosophy falsely so called, than we Wesleyans hold. Oh, sir, what a blessing is a good education! What you gentlemen might do with it, if you did but see your own power! Are there no fish in England, sir, to be caught? precious fish, with immortal souls? And is there not One who has said, "Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men?"' 'Would you have us all turn parsons?' 'Is no one to do God's work except the parson, sir? Oh, the game that you rich folks have in your hands, if you would but play it! Such a man as Colonel Bracebridge now, with the tongue of the serpent, who can charm any living soul he likes to his will, as a stoat charms a rabbit. Or you, sir, with your tongue:--you have charmed one precious creature already. I can see it: though neither of you know it, yet I know it.' Lancelot started, and blushed crimson. 'Oh, that I had your tongue, sir!' And the keeper blushed crimson, too, and went on hastily,-- 'But why could you not charm all alike! Do not the poor want you as well as the rich?' 'What can I do for the poor, my good fellow? And what do they want? Have they not houses, work, a church, and schools,--and poor-rates to fall back on?' The keeper smiled sadly. 'To fall back on, indeed! and down on, too. At all events, you rich might help to make Christians of them, and men of them. For I'm beginning to fancy strangely, in spite of all the preachers say, that, before ever you can make them Christians, you must make them men and women.' 'Are they not so already?'