n the falling off in the offertory. The Scripture-reader has brought
his "visiting book" to be inspected, and a special report on the
character of a doubtful family in the parish. The organist drops in to
report something wrong in the pedals. There is a letter to be written to
the inspector of nuisances, directing his attention to certain
odoriferous drains in Pig-and-Whistle Alley. The nurse brings her
sick-list and her little bill for the sick-kitchen. The schoolmaster
wants a fresh pupil-teacher, and discusses nervously the prospects of
his scholars in the coming inspection. There is the interest on the
penny bank to be calculated, a squabble in the choir to be adjusted, a
district visitor to be replaced, reports to be drawn up for the Bishop's
Fund and a great charitable society, the curate's sick-list to be
inspected, and a preacher to be found for the next church festival.

It was in the midst of a host of worries such as these that a card was
laid on my table with a name which I recognized as that of a young
layman from the West-end, who had for two or three months past been
working in the mission district attached to the parish. Now, whatever
shame is implied in the confession, I had a certain horror of "laymen
from the West-end." Lay co-operation is an excellent thing in itself,
and one of my best assistants was a letter-sorter in the post-office
close by; but the "layman from the West-end," with a bishop's letter of
recommendation in his pocket and a head full of theories about "heathen
masses," was an unmitigated nuisance. I had a pretty large experience of
these gentlemen, and my one wish in life was to have no more. Some had a
firm belief in their own eloquence, and were zealous for a big room and
a big congregation. I got them the big room, but I was obliged to leave
the big congregation to their own exertions, and in a month or two their
voices faded away. Then there was the charitable layman, who pounced
down on the parish from time to time and threw about meat and blankets
till half of the poor were demoralized. Or there was the statistical
layman, who went about with a note-book and did spiritual and economical
sums in the way of dividing the number of "people in the free seats" by
the number of bread tickets annually distributed. There was the layman
with a passion for homoeopathy, the ritualistic layman, the layman with
a mania for preaching down trades' unions, the layman with an
educational mania. A