It as a sort of religious duty and
exercise, as the incident I am going to relate will show.
I came to Salisbury one day to find it full of visitors, but I
succeeded in getting a room in one of the small family hotels. I was
told by the landlord that a congress was being held, got up by the
Society for the pursuit or propagation of Holiness, and that delegates,
mostly evangelical clergymen and ministers of the gospel of all
denominations, with many lay brothers, had come in from all over the
kingdom and were holding meetings every day and all day long at one of
the large halls. The three bedrooms on the same floor with mine, he
said, were all occupied by delegates who had travelled from the extreme
north of England.
In the evening I met these three gentlemen and heard all about their
society and congress and its aim and work from them.
Next morning at about half-past six I was roused from sleep by a
tremendous commotion in the room adjoining mine: cries and shouts,
hurried trampings over the floor, blows on walls and windows and the
crash of overthrown furniture. However, before I could shake my sleep
off and get up to find out the cause, there were shouts of laughter, a
proof that no one had been killed or seriously injured, and I went to
sleep again.
