But in the evening later on I saw three very old men come chuckling out
of a dissenting chapel, and surely enough they were my old friends the
blacksmith, the carpenter and the shepherd. There was a look of content
upon their faces which made me feel certain they had been singing; not
doubtless with the old glory of the violoncello, the clarinet and the
trombone, but still songs of Sion and no new fangled papistry.
CHAPTER XV
The hymn had engaged my attention; when it was over I had time to take
stock of the congregation. They were chiefly farmers--fat, very well-to-
do folk, who had come some of them with their wives and children from
outlying farms two and three miles away; haters of popery and of anything
which any one might choose to say was popish; good, sensible fellows who
detested theory of any kind, whose ideal was the maintenance of the
_status quo_ with perhaps a loving reminiscence of old war times, and a
sense of wrong that the weather was not more completely under their
control, who desired higher prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were
most contented when things were changing least; tolerators, if not
lovers, of all that was familiar, haters of all that was unfamiliar; they
would have been equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion
doubted, and at seeing it practised.
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