After Two Or Three Sundays My Class Was Largely
Increased, For The Children Keenly Enjoyed Their Competitive
Examinations.
I would also give them bits of poetry to get
by heart for the following Sunday - lines from Gray's
'Elegy,' from Wordsworth, from Pope's 'Essay on Man' - such
in short as had a moral rather than a religious tendency.
After some weeks of this, the boys becoming clamorous in
their zeal to correct one another, one of the curates left
his class to hear what was going on in mine. We happened at
the moment to be dealing with geography. The curate,
evidently shocked, went away and brought another curate.
Then the two together departed, and brought back the rector -
Dr. Jennings, one of the Westminster Canons - a most kind and
excellent man. I went on as if unconscious of the
censorship, the boys exerting themselves all the more eagerly
for the sake of the 'gallery.' When the hour was up, Canon
Jennings took me aside, and in the most polite manner thanked
me for my 'valuable assistance,' but did not think that the
'Essay on Man,' or especially geography, was suited for the
teaching in a Sunday-school. I told him I knew it was
useless to contend with so high a canonical authority;
personally I did not see the impiety of geography, but then,
as he already knew, I was a confirmed latitudinarian. He
clearly did not see the joke, but intimated that my services
would henceforth be dispensed with.
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