This abnormal concurrence of
indiscipline was extremely unlucky for the bishop. It plunged him into
strenuous controversy upon three fronts, so to speak, and involved
a great number of personal encounters far too vivid for his mental
serenity.
The Pringle polygamist was the most moving as Morrice Deans was the most
exacting and troublesome and the Wombash Pantheist the most insidiously
destructive figure in these three toilsome disputes. The Pringle man's
soul had apparently missed the normal distribution of fig-leaves; he
was an illiterate, open-eyed, hard-voiced, freckled, rational-minded
creature, with large expository hands, who had come by a side way into
the church because he was an indefatigable worker, and he insisted upon
telling the bishop with an irrepressible candour and completeness just
exactly what was the matter with his intimate life. The bishop very
earnestly did not want these details, and did his utmost to avoid the
controversial questions that the honest man pressed respectfully but
obstinately upon him.
"Even St. Paul, my lord, admitted that it is better to marry than burn,"
said the Pringle misdemeanant, "and here was I, my lord, married and
still burning!" and, "I think you would find, my lord, considering
all Charlotte's peculiarities, that the situation was really much more
trying than the absolute celibacy St.
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