see which of them can get to church first," which strikes me as a
peculiarly ready and ingenious explanation for a child of six.

In London we all went on Sundays to the Scottish Presbyterian
Church in Crown Court, just opposite Drury Lane Theatre. Dr.
Cumming, the minister of the church at that time, enjoyed an
immense reputation amongst his congregation. He was a very
eloquent man, but was principally known as always prophesying the
imminent end of the world. He had been a little unfortunate in
some of the dates he had predicted for the final cataclysm, these
dates having slipped by uneventfully without anything whatever
happening, but finally definitely fixed on a date in 1867 as the
exact date of the Great Catastrophe. His influence with his flock
rather diminished when it was found that Dr. Cumming had renewed
the lease of his house for twenty-one years, only two months
before the date he had fixed with absolute certainty as being the
end of all things. All the same, I am certain that he was
thoroughly in earnest and perfectly genuine in his convictions. As
a child I thought the church--since rebuilt--absolutely beautiful,
but it was in reality a great, gaunt, barn-like structure. It was
always crammed. We were very old-fashioned, for we sat down to
sing, and we stood to pray, and there was no instrument of any
sort. The pew in front of us belonged to Lord Aberdeen, and his
brother Admiral Gordon, one of the Elders, always sat in it with
his high hat on, conversing at the top of his voice until the
minister entered, when he removed his hat and kept silence. This
was, I believe, intended as a protest against the idea of there
being any special sanctity attached to the building itself qua
building. Dr. Cumming had recently introduced an anthem, a new
departure rather dubiously welcomed by his flock. It was the