"I
like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation--to fire into them. The
common people say I am a _bould preacher_, for I like to have my arms free,
and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with
the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly
keep my hands off you."
An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of the
Valley of Flowers as it was in more recent years:--
"I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893. It is one
of the loveliest spots in that district of lovely villages, lying in
the Vale of Taunton on the southern slope of the Quantocks. The
parsonage is entirely unchanged: there is Sydney's study, a
low-ceilinged room supported partly by pillars, level with the garden
and opening into it. There is the old-fashioned fireplace by which he
and his wife sate opposite each other in his last illness. 'Mrs.
Sydney has eight distinct illnesses, and I have nine. We take
something every hour, and pass the mixture from one to the other.'
Outside still grow his Conifers, a large Atlantic Cedar and a Deodara;
unchanged too are the palings over which Jack and Jill[97] peered with
antlered heads. Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary,
and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into
Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank.
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