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The work being thus happily completed, Sister Bourgeois, in the hope of making it contribute more effectually to the glory of God, requested the cure and church-warden of the parish to accept the new monument of piety for public use, and make it a perpetuity of the parish, in order to promote devotion to the Mother of God.
Soon, however, men of better taste and sense began to cry out. The incumbent died. His successor related to me the shocking occurrence of the picture. He had it removed, and the damage done to the edifice repaired. And what became of the grand historical? The church-warden alone, who, in the pride of his heart and ignorance, had paid the poor artist for the colours, gladly took the picture.
I have been church-warden, overseer, and guardian of various parishes in my time, and I have seen the poor in all conditions and under all circumstances, and I thought I knew them well enough; but I derived a new lesson now, and learned that it is possible for humanity to undergo the direst misfortunes without losing heart and hope to drain the cup of misery to the dregs without becoming utterly selfish and to be long immersed in the lowest depths of necessity, and yet be human still.
It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden in the church-warden's pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a brilliant action.
Their gallant father meanwhile sipped his grog and puffed away at his "church-warden" in a high-backed uncomfortable-looking chair in a corner near the fire, utterly sunk, apparently, in a fit of the most profound abstraction, from which he would occasionally start without the slightest warning, and in a most alarming manner, to bellow out generally at the wrong time and to the wrong tune something which his guests were expected to regard as a chorus.
Supper ended, Parson John and Dan went into the study, while Nellie cleared away the dishes. A bright fire burned in the large fire-place, giving the room a most genial appearance. The parson brought down a long church-warden pipe, filled and lighted it. Next he drew up a comfortable chair and proceeded to read his mail which had arrived during his absence.
We heard that people meant to come from more than thirty miles around, upon excuse of seeing my stature and Lorna's beauty; but in good truth out of sheer curiosity, and the love of meddling. I thought this wrong; and as church-warden, begged that the money might be paid into mine own hands, when taken.
Few sportsmen will act as stewards a second time; while the victim to the popular delusion of patronizing our 'national sports' considers like gentlemen who have served the office of sheriff, or church-warden that once in a lifetime is enough; hence, there is always the air of amateur actorship about them. There is always something wanting or forgotten.
"Well, and what have 'e seen?" asked the senior church-warden not Cheeseman, who was only the junior, and had neither been at church nor on the headland but Farmer Graves, the tenant of the Glebe and of Up-farm, the Admiral's best holding; "what have 'e seen, good people all, to leave parson to prache to hisself a'most a sarmon as he's hathn't prached for five year, to my knowledge?
It is easy to fancy the old actor sitting in his chair of state, the monarch of his tap-room, with a flagon of beer, and a church-warden pipe of tobacco, and holding forth, to a select circle of cronies, upon the vanished glories of the Elizabethan stage upon the days when there were persons in existence really worthy to be called actors.
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