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In consequence, every speech, even those from dry and desiccated lips, was coloured with the melody of hope. Even hoary jokes and ancestral stories, kept for tea-meetings as hard tack is kept for the army and navy, were disinfected by the kindly flavour which brooded like an April cloud.
As tea-meetings alone would not keep him, he had started again in life, for the fifth or sixth time as a herbalist now. It was a vocation which suited his delicate hands and his enthusiasm for humanity. At last, and quite lately, he had risen to be a local preacher. His first two sermons had impassioned the congregations, though there were critics to accuse him of theatricality.
The Committee of Ladies co-operating in this work assists in obtaining positions, manages tea-meetings, etc.; and the management asserts that it increasingly realizes "how important is the eye and hand of woman in all its work."
Tea-meetings are also frequently held here; and two courses of lectures in English and two courses in French are given, besides courses of instruction in stenography and book-keeping. A male quartette gives frequent musical entertainments, and in one winter thirteen "musical evenings" held forth manifold attractions to this music-loving people.
Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist a life of jealousy of the Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection!"
Letters from heirs to lost fortunes offering shares in return for money to buy them out of Chancery; from promoters of companies proposing dancing palaces to meet the needs of English visitors; from parsons begging subscriptions to new organs; from fashionable ladies asking Pete to open bazaars; from preachers inviting him to anniversary tea-meetings, and saying Methodism was proud of him.
He made a good living out of public-houses and tea-meetings, for none could play the piano like Jock, were it hymns or were it jigs. His cornet was employed in a band at Moorthorne, the mining village to the east of Bursley, and on his nocturnal journeys to and from Moorthorne with the beloved instrument he had had many a set-to with the marauding colliers who made the road dangerous for cowards.
The young man had spent part of his first morning wandering through the mass of documents and scraps of paper which Lawyer Ed called his book-keeping. Between items of a professional nature were memoranda or reports of session meetings, Highland Club meetings, political meetings, country tea-meetings, everything and anything except law.
As the wounded soldiers in Crimean hospitals turned to kiss the shadow of Florence Nightingale passing them, there was surely gladness in hearts and on faces here that would have counted it a privilege to kiss the place hallowed by the footsteps of these Christian women. About four hundred were present in the plain Moravian Chapel which is always used for these tea-meetings.
Miss Long was organist in the church, and had the loudest voice in the township of Oro. She had a favorite solo, which she had sung at three tea-meetings the winter before. "Oh, meet me! Oh, meet me! When you hear the first whip-poor-will's song!" Here was a splendid chance to let the new doctor hear her sing.
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