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CHAPTER I.

CONCERNING THE PARSON'S LEISURE HOURS
IN TOWN.

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`HIS is Friday evening. It has been a gloomy November day. And now, about nine o'clock, I hear the wind moaning as if there were to be a stormy night. But the fire is blazing, and the curtains are drawn: and here, in this little room, once the study of a wit and a poet, things are almost as quiet as if it were miles away from the great city in which it is. You might hear an occasional shout, from a street which is not far distant: and I am aware of a sound which appears to originate in the beating of carpets in the lane behind this row of houses. But the door-bell, which rings perpetually in the forenoon, and very frequently in the evening, is not likely to be rung any more to-night by any one whose business is with me: and no humble parishioner, interrupting the thread of one's thoughts, is likely to come now upon his little errand to his minister. This is indeed an hour of leisure and

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oh, what a rest and relief such an hour is, to the man who has it only now and then!

Both my sermons for Sunday are ready; and they are in a drawer in this table on which I write. I have seen, I believe, every sick person in the congregation on some day during this week. As for the parish, that is by far too large and populous to be personally overtaken by any single clergyman: but I have the great comfort of being aided by a machinery of district visitation, which does not suffer one poor person in the parish to feel that he is forgotten in his parish church. I cannot, at this moment, think of any one matter of ministerial duty which demands instant attention: though of course I have the vague sense, which I suppose will never be absent, that there are many duties impending; many things which Monday morning at the latest will bring. Surely, then, if such are ever to come in a large town parish, here is one of my leisure hours.

When a country parson, leaving a little rustic cure, undertakes the charge of such a parish, if he be a man whose heart is in his work, he is quite certain greatly to over-work himself. It is indeed a total change, from the quiet of a country parish, where dwellings are dotted singly here and there, with great fields between them; to the town, where street after street of tall houses is filled with your parishioners, all entitled to some measure of your

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