Farrar's _Life of Christ_.

On another shelf, rather less conspicuous, were some bound volumes
of _The Record_, with the novels of Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Marie
Corelli. On the ledge of his bureau _Blackwood's Magazine_, uncut, lay
ready to his hand. The _Spectator_, in process of skimming, was on his
knees. The _Standard_, fairly gutted, was on the floor. There was no
room for it anywhere else.

For the Vicar's study was much too small for him. Sitting there, in
an arm-chair and with his legs in the fender, he looked as if he had
taken flight before the awful invasion of his furniture. His bookcases
hemmed him in on three sides. His roll-top desk, advancing on him
from the window, had driven and squeezed him into the arm-chair. His
bureau, armed to the teeth, leaning from its ambush in the recess of
the fireplace, threatened both the retreat and the left flank movement
of the chair. The Vicar was neither tall nor powerful, but his study
made him look like a giant imprisoned in a cell.

The room was full of the smell of tobacco, of a smoldering coal fire,
of old warm leather and damp walls, and of the heavy, virile odor of
the Vicar.

A brown felt carpet and thick serge curtains shut out the draft of the
northeast window.

On a September evening the Vicar was snug enough in his cell; and
before the Grande Polonaise had burst in upon him he had been at peace
with God and man.