am afraid
to eat lest I should soil those new napkins. I am afraid to drink lest I
should break one of these new gilt cups. I have no comfort but in bed.
What in the world did I do that you should have been sent here?"

"There's something in it," he said, laughing. "It is the universal law
of compensation. But, honestly, it is all very tasteful and neat, and
you'll get used to it. You know it is one of the new and laughable
arguments against the eternity of punishment, that you can get used to
anything."

"I can't get that poor fellow, Lloyd, out of my head," I said, changing
the subject. "That was a pitiful letter. And the pity is that a strictly
private document, such as that was, should see the light and be
discussed fifty years after it was written, by two priests on the west
coast of Ireland To whom did he write it?"

"To Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister."

"There was a dear old friend of my youth," I said, "who was fond of
giving advice. I suppose I picked up the evil habit from him. But his
summary of all wisdom was this:--

"Never consult a doctor!

"Never go security!

"Never write a letter that may not be read in the market square!"

"I hope you have followed this sapient, but rather preternatural
advice," said Father Letheby.

"No," I replied. "It would have been well for me if I had done so."

We both lapsed into a brown study.

"It is not easy for us priests to take advice," he said at last; "I
suppose our functions are so magisterial that we cannot understand even
the suggestion of inferiority in reproof. Was it not Dean Stanley who
said that the Anglican clergy are polished into natural perfection by
domestic interchanges of those silent corrections that are so necessary,
and that it is the absence of these correctives that accounts for the so
many nodes and excrescences of our social characteristics?"

"True. But we won't take correction. Or rather, no one dare give it. The
Bishop can and will; but then a word from a bishop smites like a Nasmyth
hammer, and he is necessarily slow of reproof. A Parish priest nowadays
dare not correct a curate--"

"I beg pardon, sir," Father Letheby said; "I am sure you'll do me an
infinite favor if you kindly point out my many imprudences and
inconsistencies."

"And you'll take it well?"

"Well," he said dubiously, "I won't promise that I shall not be nettled.
But I'll take it respectfully."

"All right. We'll commence this moment. Give up that c