Mr. Fairchild having no apparent means of livelihood, and no
recreations beyond perpetually reading the Bible under a tree in
the garden. Mrs. Fairchild had the peculiar gift of being able to
recite a different prayer off by heart applicable to every
conceivable emergency; whilst John, their man-servant, was a real
"handy-man," for he was not only gardener, but looked after the
horse and trap, cleaned out the pigsties, and waited at table. One
wonders in what sequence he performed his various duties, but
perhaps the Fairchilds had not sensitive noses. Even the possibly
odoriferous John had a marvellous collection of texts at his
command. It was refreshing after all this to learn that on one
occasion all three of the little Fairchilds got very drunk, which,
as the eldest of them was only ten, would seem to indicate that,
in spite of their aggressive piety, they had their fair dose of
original sin still left in them. I liked the book notwithstanding.
There was plenty about eating and drinking; one could always skip
the prayers, and there were three or four very brightly written
accounts of funerals in it. I was present at a "Fairchild Family"
dinner given some twenty years ago in London by Lady Buxton, wife
of the present Governor-General of South Africa, at which every
one of the guests had to enact one of the characters of the book.

My youngest brother had a great taste for drawing, and was
perpetually depicting terrific steeplechases. From a confusion of
ideas natural to a child, he always introduced a church steeple
into the corner of his drawings. One Sunday he had drawn a most
spirited and hotly-contested "finish" to a steeplechase. When
remonstrated with on the ground that it was not a "Sunday"
subject, he pointed to the church steeple and said, "You don't
understand. This is Sunday, and those jockeys are all racing to