Chapters 1 - 10 Summary

Chapter 1: The narrator introduces the subject of his story, his maternal great-grandfather, Reverend Oscar Hopkins. When the narrator was a boy, his mother would proudly show off the time-worn daguerreotype of Reverend Hopkins whenever she invited a bishop over for tea, as she loved to do. The bishops mainly came from Grafton, but visiting bishops, reverends and a canon were also invited to the narrator's home by his pious mother. She loved to tell the story of how Oscar Hopkins transported the church of St. John's to Bellingen. This church was very dear to her heart, and despite the fact that it lay ten miles away in Gleniffer, she was married in that church. The narrator was baptized there, and his mother always insisted that the family drive the twenty mile round trip each Sunday for services, even when gas rations...