"Do you, General, know anybody named Toffington?" asked Tom.

"No, Gunning-but here comes Clayton, he knows everybody in the State that is worth knowing. What you have told me is most extraordinary-most extraordinary, Gunning. It only goes to show how necessary it is for every man to be prepared for emergencies of this kind. You should never go unarmed, sir. You had a very narrow escape-a very narrow escape, Gunning. Here, Clayton-come over here."

Oliver pulled his face into long lines to hide his laughter, when his eye rested on the Colonel walking toward him.

The Colonel, evidently, did not hear McTavish's call. His mind was occupied with something much more important. He had been finishing a game of whist upstairs, and the mahogany-colored Cerberus had not dared to disturb him until the hand was played out. The fact that young Oliver Horn had called to see him at such an hour and in such a place had greatly disturbed him. He felt sure that something out of the ordinary had happened.

"My dear boy," he cried, as Oliver rose to meet him, "I have this instant heard you were here, or I should never have kept you waiting a moment. Nothing serious-nothing at home?"

"Oh, no, Colonel. Only a word from mother, sir. I missed you at the bank and Mr. Stiger thought that I might better come here," and he delivered his mother's message in a low voice and resumed his seat again.

The Colonel, now that his mind was at rest, dropped into a chair, stroked his goatee with his thumb and forefinger, and ran over in his mind the sum of his engagements.

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Tell your dear mother," he said, “that I will do myself the honor of calling upon her on my way home late this afternoon. Nothing will give me greater pleasure. Now stay awhile with me and let me order something for you, my boy," and he beckoned to one of the brown-coated servants who had entered the room with a fresh tray for the Gunning table.

"No, thank you, Colonel; I ought not to stop," Oliver replied in an apologetic way, as he rose from his seat. "I really ought to go back and tell mother," and with a grasp of Clayton's hand and a bow to one or two men in the room who were watching his movements, the Colonel following him to the outer door, Oliver took himself off, as was the duty of one so young and so entirely out of place among a collection of men all so knowing and distinguished.

HERE is an idea prevalent that the strict observance of the Sabbath was almost wholly confined to the North. Nothing could be more erroneous. "The Blue Laws" of Connecticut, surviving as a proverb for hardness, have impressed the popular mind and fixed an idea which was, however, not absolutely accurate. As severe as those enactments were, they were scarcely more rigorous, wherever the observance of Sunday was concerned, than those under which the Colony of Virginia. was established and developed. Attendance on Divine service was as strictly enforced, and abstinence from all secular employment as rigidly enjoined. It was a church-going time. Religion engrossed the energies of the people. Participation in worship was the law, and whoever failed in it was a law-breaker and was dealt with accordingly. Later on, that is, prior to the Revolution, came a certain laxness-the reflex of the taut-strung bow-when the fox-hunting, cockfighting parsons were inducted into the livings; but as the causes were temporary, the main cause being the political appointment by an absentee metropolitan, so the effect was not permanent.

It was out of these conditions that ⚫ the Hanover Presbytery sprang, under the influence of Patrick Henry's model, the eloquent "Parson Davies," later the president of Princeton College. Indeed, while some of the English parsons who have made the time notorious, were dicing and drinking and fighting, the laity were standing stanchly for the old customs, and were making the saddling upon them of such miscreants one of the charges in their indictment against the Government "at home." They withstood innovation. They kept the faith. They built churches which still stand to-day as memorials of their piety and churchmanship. Among the finest architectural relics of the colo

nial period are the massive brick churches throughout Tidewater Virginia, some of them now towering in a wilderness, like that on Carter's Creek, near the Rappahannock. It is possible that pride, too, entered into the motive at times, for it is related that old Mrs. Carter, of Corotomon, whose family built the church on Carter's Creek, when she came to die, directed that she should be buried under the aisle on the side where the poor sat, that they might walk over her in her death, who had carried herself so loftily in her life.

"President" Nelson, of the King's Council, who owned the land in Hanover on which the mansion described in this paper was built two generations later, always spread a table on Sunday, at his home in York, to entertain the congregation that attended the church there.

Lists of the vestries have been published, and every student of the history of that time must be struck by the number of those who became noted in the great revolutionary struggle. The rolls of the great conventions were almost made up from the vestry-lists.

Having achieved independence, these same churchmen disestablished the Church. Mr. Madison said that the clergy having so largely taken the English side had made the Church so unpopular that the churchmen felt it necessary to disestablish it to save it. Their feeling is illustrated by the story told by Bishop Meade of the old gentleman in his cocked hat and ruffles who, during the fight over the disestablishment measure, was approached by a lobbyist with an inquiry as to how he would vote.

He said he should vote for the bill; for he was of opinion that every man should have the right to choose his own road to heaven; but he was very sure that a gentleman would always take the Episcopal way.

Even the drastic measure of disestablish

ment hardly saved the Church; and the first bishops, Madison and Moore, had a hard struggle to build up the waste places.

Then came the iron bishop, Meade, who saw the task before him clearly, and went about it with an irresistible resolution. A man of remarkable intellect, of unquestioned piety, and of iron will, he took the Church in Virginia in his strong grasp and moulded it to suit himself. He was the supreme dictator among the Episcopalians of the State, and stamped his impress indelibly on their thought and life. He was a Spartan in habit and a Calvinist in creed. He asked no one to do what he would not do himself; but few could endure without acute suffering what was merely a spur to his energy and an inspiration to his zeal.

The writer remembers him in his early childhood, when the Bishop came on his Episcopal visitation to stay with his relatives in Hanover. His place beside his wife's grave was railed in and reserved in their lot at the Old Fork Church, which used to give us youngsters a grewsome feeling before we knew how close to Life is Death. I have since seen the archbishops of both the Roman and Anglican communions, and have seen the House of American Bishops in procession; but I have never seen any prelate received with the homage that this stern head of the Virginia Church had from his people.* And this he did by the sheer force of his intellect and character. In the old parlor at "Oakland" an engraving of him in his episcopal robes hung beside the engraving of St. Peter preaching, one of Queen Victoria in her coronation robes, and one of the Washington family.

The boys of the household of the preceding generation had gone to school to him, and recited their Latin with their jackets off, and the entire connection still took the law and the gospel from him, on all mooted points.

He was married in Hanover, and arriving the day before that set for the wedding, and finding the clergyman in attendance, he declined to wait, and the bride assenting they stood up and were married

At General Cocke's they kept a carriage which was known as the bishop's coach" and was only used when the bishop came.

that evening. No one gainsaid him. He preached a stern gospel and lived it.

Horse-racing, cards, the theatre, and dancing were all banned as equally wicked. The observance of Sunday was enforced as a cardinal doctrine.

It was in a family established in the doctrines of the Church as expounded by this virile divine that the writer was reared. As to the keeping of the Sabbath this rearing was after the straitest sect of our religion. Religion entered into the life as I have never known it do anywhere else. Instead of being stowed away in a corner or laid up for use on Sunday, it was always at hand, and became a part, and a very obvious part, of the daily life. Nor was it a religion softened and emasculated to suit the delicate fancies of modern dilettanteism. It was the religion of the grim evangelical divines of the last century. This world was only "a vale of misery," through which we had to walk with fear and trembling so as to reach in safety the other world where true Life begins. The Bible was the literal word of God, and the only admissible question on any point was what the Bible said. No man took from it even if somewhat was added to it by Calvinistic exegesis. It is related that the wife of the old churchman of York who used to spread his table to entertain the whole congregation, on coming from church one Sunday called her maid to come and help her off with her dress, as she "had heard so much about hell and damnation she did not feel as if she would cool off before Christmas." The style had not changed in a hundred years. The lurid glare of fire was pictured from the pulpit, denounced against all mankind; but it was tempered ⚫ by the soft musings of the psalmist in hours of hope, and the gentle sayings of the Saviour as he yearned over a fallen world. These, though hardly understood beside the terrific interpretation of the old divines, were somehow clung to and believed in. Fast days were kept as regularly as Sundays.

The family life was so religious in the week that it was necessary to have Sunday quite completely given up to devotion to distinguish it. Family prayers—with a hymn sung by the whole family-were always had twice a day, and after the beginning of the war, when the President

of the Confederacy in a proclamation asked for special prayers every day for the soldiers, they were held also at one o'clock, a custom which has been kept up in the household ever since, though someone characterized it as a Mohammedan custom. Whenever a clergyman came to the house he was always asked to have prayers before he left. Thus, occasionally "prayers were had four times a day.

Our uncle, Colonel Nelson, was the master, and always read prayers if he was at home. In his absence they were read by the next in seniority. The first sound in the morning was his vigorous call to prayers, and then his sonorous voice as he read out the hymn. He always had prayers for his servants before they went to the fields in the morning, and later on he always drew up his men and read prayers to his battalion. This Virginian churchman was a stout Cromwellian who prayed with his sword in his hand and fought with a prayer on his lips. He was known during the War as "Old Ironsides."

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The rule for the youngsters was butter" unless we got to prayers, a persuasive ordinance; for "dry bread" is dry indeed to a youthful palate. The singing of the hymn, however, served a double purpose it gave us notice and granted us some minutes of grace. It had another and more permanent effect-it taught us insensibly the hymns.

A wayfarer passing through the country on some business, was directed to "Oakland" to spend the night. He was detained for a day or two by bad weather, and after he went away he told someone that he had been to a curious place, an old bachelor's home where twenty people sat down at table and where when they were not eating they were praying.

We were brought up on the Bible, our regular duty being the reading of the lessons for the day, a grounding which we little appreciated at the time. Sunday was absolutely given up by the elders to the worship of God. In preparation for it our playthings, never very numerous, were put away, and the reading of secular books was discontinued Saturday night. After thirty years I can recall the lorn emptiness of my Sunday pockets. We were not allowed to "play" or "do" anything on Sunday; our sole "recreation"—a word

which has always had an unpleasant sound for me since-being a walk. It should be said that the resourcefulness of the juvenile mind was not infrequently equal to the emergency, and avoiding the forbidden line of games, we occasionally substituted not less interesting entertainments. Those Sunday afternoons sometimes witnessed boxing and wrestling matches, "clod battles," and other athletic exercises which were not reported at the house.

Our reading was carefully looked after and guarded, all our "week-day books" being prohibited and our reading being confined to "Sunday books." Prominent among these were Mrs. Sherwood's works, beginning with "Henry Milner," "Little Henry and his Bearer," and "The Fairchild Family," the latter a grim and terrifying collection of moral teachings. One of these I well remember was an account of an excursion on which the father took little Harry and Lucy, after a quarrel, to see hanging on a gibbet the body of a man who had killed his brother.

The writer was nearly thirty years old before he ever saw a lady read a novel on Sunday, and such is the effect of early training that he never sees one so engaged now without its raising doubts, at least, as to her social standing.

The churches, Trinity and "The Old Fork," were four and ten miles off, respectively, and service was held in them on alternate Sundays.

"The Old Fork," amid its immemorial oaks, is one of the old colonial churches, built of brick with the glazed "headers" which, mellowed by the years, give that soft gray color so pleasing in old structures, and with fine, simple lines that render a building dignified and impressive.

The road to the Fork Church was at that time bordered by the plantations of gentle-folk, well cultivated and, prior to the close of the war, supporting a large population. It followed the ridge for miles. Now there are scarcely three places left in the hands of their original owners, and the country is almost entirely grown up. But the writer has had occasion to know that their influence has not perished from the earth. Their sons have gone out into many lands, stout soldiers of the cross, and fighters for the principles of their fathers.

We always went to church irrespective