But Mr. Barton is all for th' hymns, and a sort o' music as I can't join
in at all.'

'And so,' said Mr. Pilgrim, recalling Mr. Hackit from lyrical
reminiscences to narrative, 'he called out Silence! did he? when he got
into the pulpit; and gave a hymn out himself to some meeting-house tune?'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Hackit, stooping towards the candle to pick up a stitch,
'and turned as red as a turkey-cock. I often say, when he preaches about
meekness, he gives himself a slap in the face. He's like me--he's got a
temper of his own.'

'Rather a low-bred fellow, I think, Barton,' said Mr. Pilgrim, who hated
the Reverend Amos for two reasons--because he had called in a new doctor,
recently settled in Shepperton; and because, being himself a dabbler in
drugs, he had the credit of having cured a patient of Mr. Pilgrim's.
'They say his father was a Dissenting shoemaker; and he's half a
Dissenter himself. Why, doesn't he preach extempore in that cottage up
here, of a Sunday evening?'

'Tchuh!'--this was Mr. Hackit's favourite interjection--'that preaching
without book's no good, only when a man has a gift, and has the Bible at
his fingers' ends. It was all very well for Parry--he'd a gift; and in my
youth I've heard the Ranters out o' doors in Yorkshire go on for an hour
or two on end, without ever sticking fast a minute. There was one clever
chap, I remember, as used to say, "You're like the woodpigeon; it says
do, do, do all day, and never sets about any work itself." That's
bringing it home to people. But our parson's no gift at all that way; he
can preach as good a sermon as need be heard when he writes it down. But
when he tries to preach wi'out book, he rambles about, and doesn't stick