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