and I hate Sabbath-breakers; I would punish them; and I’m against the public-houses on a Sunday; but aboard my little yacht, say on a Sunday morning in the Channel, I don’t forget I owe it to the Lord that he has been good enough to put me in the way of keeping a yacht; no; I read prayers to my crew, and a chapter in the Bible-Genesis, Deuteronomy, Kings, Acts, Paul, just as it comes.  All’s good that’s there.  Then we’re free for the day! man, boy, and me; we cook our victuals, and we must look to the yacht, do you see.  But we’ve made our peace with the Almighty.  We know that.  He don’t mind the working of the vessel so long as we’ve remembered him.  He put us in that situation, exactly there, latitude and longitude, do you see, and work the vessel we must.  And a glass of grog and a pipe after dinner, can’t be any offence.  And I tell you, honestly and sincerely, I’m sure my conscience is good, and I really and truly don’t know what it is not to know happiness.’

‘Then you don’t know God,’ said Carpendike, like a voice from a cave.

‘Or nature:  or the state of the world,’ said Beauchamp, singularly impressed to find himself between two men, of whom—­each perforce of his tenuity and the evident leaning of his appetites—­one was for the barren black view of existence, the other for the fantastically bright.  As to the men personally, he chose Carpendike, for all his obstinacy and sourness.  Oggler’s genial piety made him shrink with nausea.

But Lord Palmet paid Mr. Oggler a memorable compliment, by assuring him that he was altogether of his way of thinking about happiness.

The frank young nobleman did not withhold a reference to the two or three things essential to his happiness; otherwise Mr. Oggler might have been pleased and flattered.

Before quitting the shop, Beauchamp warned Carpendike that he should come again.  ’Vote or no vote, you’re worth the trial.  Texts as many as you like.  I’ll make your faith active, if it’s alive at all.  You speak of the Lord loving his own; you make out the Lord to be your own, and use your religion like a drug.  So it appears to me.  That Sunday tyranny of yours has to be defended.

Remember that; for I for one shall combat it and expose it.  Good day.’

Beauchamp continued, in the street:  ’Tyrannies like this fellow’s have made the English the dullest and wretchedest people in Europe.’

Palmet animadverted on Carpendike:  ’The dog looks like a deadly fungus that has poisoned the woman.’

‘I’d trust him with a post of danger, though,’ said Beauchamp.

Before the candidate had opened his mouth to the next elector he was beamed on.  M’Gilliper, baker, a floured brick face, leaned on folded arms across his counter and said, in Scotch:  ’My vote? and he that asks me for my vote is the man who, when he was midshipman, saved the life of a relation of mine from death by drowning! my wife’s first cousin, Johnny Brownson—­and held him up four to five minutes in the water, and never left him till he was out of danger!  There ’s my hand on it, I will, and a score of householders in Bevisham the same.’  He dictated precious names and addresses to Beauchamp, and was curtly thanked for his pains.