were few surpliced choirs outside the cathedrals; hymns were an innovation; preaching in surplice regarded with suspicion; weekly Communions rare; parochial missions scarcely known; only the first tentative beginnings of sisterhood life and work; little organized lay work in the slums of large cities. Cathedrals, and such places as the Abbey and St. Paul's, were attended by scanty congregations, as if they were no longer needed for centres of Diocesan life and work, mere survivals of a past age.
Yet there was much to set against this. I recall, for example, the case of our parish church at Mortimer, and probably no very exceptional example of those days. At the Sunday morning service there was a gathering of the country gentlemen in the parish, the yeomen and tenant farmers, which seldom failed to fill the church; in the afternoon a similar attendance of labourers and servants. Absentees from church were noted, and comment made on their negligence. It was a good hunting and shooting neighbourhood; the landowners and county folk, as also the labourers with their families regularly resident in the parish, seldom leaving it except for a short occasional holiday, occupying the same farms and properties which their forefathers had held for many generations. I remember, as a lad, on Sunday mornings, going down with my Father, for the service after his Sunday School, and always finding, at the Lychgate, which led into the churchyard, a gathering of parishioners, ready to welcome the Vicar; a sort of weekly rendezvous, full of talk of the crops, the last good run, the next fixtures, and family gossip, until the time came for Service to begin. It was part of my business to take a small bottle of egg and sherry for the Vicar's
