This in the tone of a defiant martyr; as one under the impression that we were living in the middle ages and that I was an Inquisitor ready to march the united family to the stake on the satisfactory evidence that the reading of the Bible was maintained in it.

I begged him to proceed, and he did so, the defiant spirit a little mollified.

He opened at a mark somewhere in Numbers.  It was a chapter devoted to the names of the tribes and their families.  Poor Mr. Hardcap!  If he was defiant at the first threatening of martyrdom, he endured the infliction of the torture with a resolute bravery worthy of a covenanter.  The extent to which he became entangled in those names, the new baptism they received at his hands, the singular contortions of which he proved himself capable in reproducing them, the extraordinary and entirely novel methods of pronunciation which he evolved for that occasion, and the heroic bravery with which he struggled through, awoke my keenest sympathies.  Words which he fought and vanquished in the first paragraph rose in rebellion in a second to be fought and vanquished yet again.  The chapter at length drew to an end.  I saw to my infinite relief that he was at last emerging from this interminable feast of names.  What was my horror to see him turn the page and enter with fresh zeal upon the conquest of a second chapter.

Little Charlie (five years old) was sound asleep in his mother’s arms.  Her eyes were fixed on vacancy and her mind interiorly calculating something.  I wondered not that James snored audibly on the sofa.  Susie never took her eyes off her father, but sat as one that watches to see how a task is done.  My wife listened for a little while with averted face, then wandered off, as she afterwards told me, to a mental calculation of her resources and expenses for the next month.  And still Mr. Hardcap rolled out those census tables of Judea’s ancient history.  It was not till he had finished three chapters that at length he closed the book and invited me to lead in prayer.

Half an hour later, after Jamie had been roused up from his corner of the sofa and sent off to bed, and Charlie had been undressed and put to bed without being more than half aroused, Mrs. Hardcap asked my advice as to this method of reading the Bible.

“Mr. Hardcap,” said she, “read a statement the other day to the effect that by reading three chapters every day and five on Sunday he could finish the Bible in a year.  And he is going through it in regular course.  But I sometimes doubt whether that is the best way.  I am sure our children do not take the interest in it which they ought to; and I am afraid those chapters of hard names do not always profit me.”

The martyr in Mr. Hardcap re-asserted itself.

“All Scripture,” said he solemnly, “is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for instruction in righteousness.  We cannot afford to pass by any part of the word of God.”