shutting our eyes, and starving ourselves gently into futurity. I mean
that we should do the things, and do them well; because they are of such
an insignificance they may just as well be done right as not. Get
yourself into the habit of washing dishes so well that instinctively you
are thorough over the job, and you won't have to think about it while
you do it. But the self-consciousness put into mundane affairs by the
average religious beats the worldly person hollow."

"They dissipate their secret bread into crumbs, in fact," said Ishmael
with a laugh.

The Parson nodded. "Exactly--and stale crumbs at that. I wonder--it's
easy to judge after all, and, as I once tried to tell you, it means
something different to every man. Tolerance--the deeper tolerance which
is charity ... if life doesn't teach one that, it's all been so much
waste. Who am I and who is anyone to despise the means by which another
man lives? Some of us find our relief in action, in the actual sweat of
our bodies; some find it in set hours and rows of little devotional
books--the technique of the thing, so to speak. And some of us find it
out of doors and some within narrow walls--some find it in goodness and
some only by sin and shame.... One shouldn't let other people's
salvation rub one up the wrong way."

"It all goes to make the pattern, as Killigrew would say," suggested
Ishmael thoughtfully.

"When I was very young," went on Ishmael after a pause, "I think I lived
by the Spirit--much more so than I can now, Da Boase. I seem to have
gone dead, somehow," Boase nodded, but said nothing. "And then it was
Cloom that meant life to me when I came back here and started in on it.