Though they had, perhaps, never received a ‘visitor’ before, it was wonderful with what skill the cottage women especially—­the men being often away at work—­adapted themselves to the new regime.  Each time they told a more pitiful tale, set in such a realistic framing of hardship and exposure that a stranger could not choose but believe.  In the art of encouraging attentions of this sort no one excels the cottage women; the stories they will relate, with the smallest details inserted in the right place, are something marvellous.  At first you would exclaim with the deepest commiseration, such a case of suffering and privation as this cannot possibly be equalled by any in the parish; but calling at the next cottage, you are presented with a yet more moving relation, till you find the whole population are plunged in misery and afflicted with incredible troubles.  They cannot, surely, be the same folk that work so sturdily at harvest.  But when the curate has administered words of consolation and dropped the small silver dole in the palm, when his shovel-hat and black frock-coat tails have disappeared round the corner of the copse, then in a single second he drops utterly out of mind.  No one comes to church the more.  If inquiries are made why they did not come, a hundred excuses are ready; the rain, a bad foot, illness of the infant, a cow taken ill and requiring attention, and so on.

After some months of such experience the curate’s spirits gradually decline; his belief in human nature is sadly shaken.  Men who openly oppose, who argue and deny, are comparatively easy to deal with; there is the excitement of the battle with evil.  But a population that listens, and apparently accepts the message, that is so thankful for little charities, and always civil, and yet turns away utterly indifferent, what is to be done with it?  Might not the message nearly as well be taken to the cow at her crib, or the horse at his manger?  They, too, would receive a wisp of sweet hay willingly from the hand.

But the more bitter the experience, the harder the trial, the more conscientiously the curate proceeds upon his duty, struggling bravely through the mire.  He adds another mile to his daily journey:  he denies himself some further innocent recreation.  The cottages in the open fields are comparatively pleasant to visit, the sweet fresh air carries away effluvia.  Those that are so curiously crowded together in the village are sinks of foul smell, and may be of worse—­places where, if fever come, it takes hold and quits not.  His superior requests him earnestly to refrain awhile and to take rest, to recruit himself with a holiday—­even orders him to desist from overmuch labour.  The man’s mind is in it, and he cannot obey.  What is the result?