The World’s Tragedy

II PREFACE. bonnet, I as Greumoch Dhuibh Mc. Alpin had pierced with that same knotty lance. Nor shall I easily forget how we filled the tea-urn at the Brethrens’ tea-fight with old Mr. Sherrall’s castor-oil, to the discomfiture of the faith- ful, who were too polite to call the attention of the hostess to their interior pangs. Joyful too was the great tea at Mr. Nunnerley’s where we delayed the prayer meeting one whole hour by plying Mrs. Musty with avalanches of food after everyone else had finished. Ah joy ! as piglike she munched on ! while the hapless brethren (torn between impatience and polite- ness) wrung their hands in anguish. Only my natural reluctance to strike a tragic chord so early in my narrative obliges me to omit some account of the circumstances in which the well-named Mrs. Clapham the fishmonger’s wife was expelled from “ fellowship ”. But above all I remember how we soused Leggett’s boy, known as the Living Mushroom from the shape of his hat, in old Ailes’s pig-tub. And then my father died, and the note changes. To explain, I find myself obliged to give a short account of the Plymouth Brethren, their tenets, character, and history. THE PLYMOUTH BRETHREN The religious movement which obtained this name through the sudden and enormous success of an evange