Jack Russell gave his great fist to the Bishop, who pressed it warmly. As they thus stood hand in hand, Jack said,
"I won't deceive you—not for the world, my lord. I'll give up the pack, sure enough—but Mrs. Russell will keep it instead of me."
The Bishop dropped his hand.
That men like Chowne and Hannaford were unpopular in their parishes I have never heard. I do not believe they were troubled with any aggrieved parishioners. The unpopular man in his parish is he who tries to raise the moral and spiritual tone of his people. They do not like to be made to think that all is not well with them, and it affords them satisfaction to think that they are not worse, if no better, than their pastor.
I know a parish in quite another part of England where the attendance at church was very thin, till the incumbent was one day accidentally, I believe, overtaken with drink, and was had up before the magistrates. After that his church filled, he became a popular man—he had come down to the level of his people.
But, as already said, it is of the bad parsons, as of the bad squires, that stories are told, and told from generation to generation; whereas those of spotless life—the vast bulk of them are such—drop year by year out of existence, and at the same time out of memory.
In the parish in which I live there was a rector, about seventy years ago, who in his old age went to the neighbouring town, nine miles off, to live, and when asked by the Bishop why he was non-resident, said that there was no barber nearer who could curl his wig.
That man held the living for a long term of years; he may have done good,—that he did evil I do not think, because the only thing remembered against him is, that he did not live in a place where his wig could not be curled. But is it not sad!—a long life's labour spent among the poor, preaching God's word, ministering to the sick and afflicted and broken-hearted, and all passing away without leaving the smallest trace, indeed the only reminiscence of the man being, that he hurt the amour propre of the parish by telling the Bishop there was no one in it competent to curl his wig.
