Temple Bar Volume 36 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Nine o'clock had just struck, the breakfast bell was ringing, and Sir James O'Shaughnessey was standing at the foot of the table waiting to see if any other member of his family intended to come down to prayers. Lady O'Shanghnessey was present, and had made the tea, and Sir James's little niece, as was her wont, had appeared just two minutes before that click of the dining-room bell which summoned first cook (who had been grilling the bacon and kidneys, and was in consequence rather hot and grim of visage), then the tidy housemaids in their clean aprons, butler and footman bringing up the rear. I think the best and quickest way of ingratiating oneself into the good books of the heads of a household?the master's more especially? is a punctual and regular attendance at breakfast and family prayers. A man feels slighted if his family does not seem to appreciate him as a chaplain; and how natural it is! If one is staying at a parsonage it would seem to me the height of ill manners not to 'go to church on Sunday and hear one's host's sermon, or intoning, if that is more his specialite, or his reading of the lessons; and so why not think pretty nearly as much of his reading prayers at home ? If you meet a friend by chance who tells you he is going to sing at a concert next week, or make a speech at a temperance meeting, or deliver a lecture, does not your first impulse cause you to declare, " Oh ! I shall certainly come and hear you." I know not whether Hyacinth OShaughnesseys ideas on this subject were the same as mine, or if it was merely chance, and her school habit of early rising, that made her so regular, but certain it is that during her two months' visit at her relations in Cavendish Square she never once missed prayers, and this circumstance in great measure, co...