She was vain both of her
sins and mercies, poor soul, and in her scrimp figure, with its
ill-fitting uniform, Heaven knows how long she went on. I was
distracted by a clergyman passing on the outside of the ring of
listening women and children, and looking, I chose to think,
somewhat sourly askance at the distasteful ceremonial. I wished
to stop him, on his way to the Minster, if that was his way, and
tell him that so Christianity must have begun, and so the latest
form of it must always begin and work round after ages and ages
to the beauty and respectability his own ritual has. But I now
believe this would have been the greatest impertinence and
hypocrisy, for I myself found the performance before us as
tasteless and tawdry as he could possibly have done. He was going
toward the Minster, and it would make him forget it; but I was
going away from it, perhaps, for the last time, and this loud
side-show of religion would make me forget the Minster.
V
Our railway hotel lay a little way out of the town, and after a
day's sight-seeing we were to meet or mingle with troops of
wholesome-looking workmen whose sturdiness and brightness were a
consolation after the pale debility of labor's looks in
Sheffield.
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