Most of the students were but too ready to regard, or at least to treat this object as the first and foremost of duties.  The master-duty of devotion to Christ, and obedience to every word that proceeded out of His mouth, was very much treated as a thing understood, requiring little enforcement; while, the main thing demanded of them being sermons in some sense their own—­honey culled at least by their own bees, and not bought in jars, much was said about the plan and composition of sermons, about style and elocution, and action—­all plainly and confessedly, with a view to pulpit-success—­the lowest of all low successes, and the most worldly.

These instructions Walter Drake accepted as the wisdom of the holy serpent—­devoted large attention to composition, labored to form his style on the best models, and before beginning to write a sermon, always heated the furnace of production with fuel from some exciting or suggestive author:  it would be more correct to say, fed the mill of composition from some such source; one consequence of all which was, that when at last, after many years, he did begin to develop some individuality, he could not, and never did shake himself free of those weary models; his thoughts, appearing in clothes which were not made for them, wore always a certain stiffness and unreality which did not by nature belong to them, blunting the impressions which his earnestness and sincerity did notwithstanding make.

Determined to succeed, he cultivated eloquence also—­what he supposed eloquence, that is, being, of course, merely elocution, to attain the right gestures belonging to which he looked far more frequently into his landlady’s mirror, than for his spiritual action into the law of liberty.  He had his reward in the success he sought.  But I must make haste, for the story of worldly success is always a mean tale.  In a few years, and for not a few after, he was a popular preacher in one of the suburbs of London—­a good deal sought after, and greatly lauded.  He lived in comfort, indulged indeed in some amount of show; married a widow with a large life-annuity, which between them they spent entirely, and that not altogether in making friends with everlasting habitations; in a word, gazed out on the social landscape far oftener than lifted his eyes to the hills.

After some ten or twelve years, a change began.  They had three children; the two boys, healthy and beautiful, took scarlatina and died; the poor, sickly girl wailed on.  His wife, who had always been more devoted to her children than her husband, pined, and died also.  Her money went, if not with her, yet away from him.  His spirits began to fail him, and his small, puny, peaking daughter did not comfort him much.  He was capable of true, but not yet of pure love; at present his love was capricious.  Little Dora—­a small Dorothy indeed in his estimation—­had always been a better child than either of her brothers, but he loved them the