ion on Isaac's part.

"Well, I suppose I am, sir," said the bee-master, and in he came.

The thick walls, the stained windows, and the stone floor, which was
below the level of the churchyard, made the church very cool. Master
Isaac and I seated ourselves so that we had a good view within, and
could also catch a peep through the open porch of the sunlit country
outside. Charlie's father was in his place when we got in; his
threadbare coat was covered by the white linen of his office, and I do
not think it would have been possible even to my levity to have felt
anything but a respectful awe of him in church.

The cares of this life are not as a rule improving to the countenance.
No one who watches faces can have failed to observe that more beauty is
marred and youth curtailed by vulgar worry than by almost any other
disfigurement. In the less educated classes, where self-control is not
very habitual, and where interests beyond petty and personal ones are
rare, the soft brows and tender lips of girlhood are too often puckered
and hardened by mean anxieties, even where these do not affect the girls
personally, but only imitatively, and as the daily interests of their
station in life. In such cases the discontented, careworn look is by no
means a certain indication of corresponding suffering, but there are too
many others in which tempers that should have been generous, and faces
that should have been noble, and aims that should have been high, are
blurred and blunted by the real weight of real everyday care.

There are yet others; in which the spirit is too strong for mortal
accidents to pull it down--minds that the narrowest career cannot
vulgarize--faces to which care but adds a look of pathos--souls which
keep their aims and faiths apart from the fluctuations of "the things
that are seen." The personal influence of natures of this type is
generally very large, and it was very large in the case of Cripple
Charlie's father, and made him a sort of Prophet, Priest, and King over
a rough and scattered population, with whom the shy, scholarly poor
gentleman had not otherwise much in common.

It was his personal influence, I am sure, which made the congregation so
devout! There is one rule which, I believe, applies to all
congregations, of every denomination, and any kind of ritual, and that
is, that the enthusiasm of the congregation is in direct proportion to
the enthusiasm of the minister; not merely to his personal wor