ABSTRACT
To account for the remarks of Mr Smeeth and of our heroine, it, is necessary to shift the scene back to the previous Sunday afternoon, and the parish of Dulham. Mr Smeeth was the incumbent of the little village of Flatton, and having no afternoon service of his own, had made an appointment with Athelstan Lockstable to walk over and hear Mr Bristley’s discourse, which was greatly in vogue in the county on account of its polemical character. To hear the articles of the dominant creed pulled to pieces by innuendo was an intellectual pastime calculated almost to make an English Sunday lively, especially as, in a place like Dulham, church services were almost wholly useless for the purpose of displaying new mantles and head dress. Consequently Mr Bristley became so popular a preacher, that in order to save himself the need of replying to the many letters and postcards he received inquiring whether he would preach on such and such a Sunday, he hit upon the device of hoisting a white flag in his garden when he was not absent from home, which bore on it his crest and motto in black and red, a bristling porcupine astride of a sword (we do not attempt heraldic terms), and underneath, a scroll in the original Greek, ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.’ When this flag was up, the neighbourhood knew there would be an afternoon lecture next Sunday.
