Too Much Credit Must Not Be Put Upon Cottagers' Tales:

One day they are all so bitter, hanging would not be sufficient, and you would suppose they were going to show a lifelong enmity; in a week or two it is all forgotten, and next month they are taking tea together.

Those who know them best say you should never believe anything a cottager tells you. There is sure to be exaggeration, or they tell you half the story, and they catch up the wildest rumour and repeat it as unquestioned truth. No doubt after a while all this sound and fury signifying nothing will blow off, and there will be a reconciliation; the pastor and the elder will be bosom friends, all the congregation will be calling, and eating and drinking; there will be pipes and three-star bottles, and the elect will be made perfect. If the fourth wife disappears in time there will be a fifth, and Christian Mormonism will flourish exceedingly. Very likely the furious fall-out is over before now; there is no stability in this peculiar cast, the chapel mind.

Another curious reflection suggests itself to any one who has seen the fervour of Bethel. Within an easy walk of each other there are eight chapels and three churches and the Salvation Army barracks; a thinly populated country district, too; no squires, the farmers all depressed and ruined, the cottagers howling about starvation wages. One would have thought all of them together could hardly maintain a single spiritual teacher.

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