The Imperialist | Page 7

"now in session," also--was it ever forgotten once? And even
the Prime Minister, "and those who sit in council with him," with just a

hint of extra commendation if it happened to be Mr Gladstone. The
minister of Knox Church, Elgin, Ontario, Canada, kept his eye on them
all. Remote as he was, and concerned with affairs of which they could
know little, his sphere of duty could never revolve too far westward to
embrace them, nor could his influence, under any circumstances, cease
to be at their disposal. It was noted by some that after Mr Drummond
had got his D.D. from an American University he also prayed
occasionally for the President of the neighbouring republic; but this
was rebutted by others, who pointed out that it happened only on the
occurrence of assassinations, and held it reasonable enough. The
cavillers mostly belonged to the congregation of St Andrew's,
"Established"--a glum, old-fashioned lot indeed--who now and then
dropped in of a Sunday evening to hear Mr Drummond preach. (There
wasn't much to be said for the preaching at St Andrew's.) The
Established folk went on calling the minister of Knox Church "Mr"
Drummond long after he was "Doctor" to his own congregation, on
account of what they chose to consider the dubious source of the
dignity; but the Knox Church people had their own theory to explain
this hypercriticism. and would promptly turn the conversation to the
merits of the sermon.
Twenty-five years it was, in point, this Monday morning when the
Doctor--not being Established we need not hesitate, besides by this
time nobody did--stood with Mr Murchison in the store door and talked
about having seen changes. He had preached his anniversary sermon
the night before to a full church when, laying his hand upon his
people's heart, he had himself to repress tears. He was aware of another
strand completed in their mutual bond: the sermon had been a moral, an
emotional, and an oratorical success; and in the expansion of the
following morning Dr Drummond had remembered that he had
promised his housekeeper a new gas cooking-range, and that it was
high time he should drop into Murchison's to inquire about it. Mrs
Forsyth had mentioned at breakfast that they had ranges with exactly
the improvement she wanted at Thompson's, but the minister was deaf
to the hint. Thompson was a Congregationalist and, improvement or no
improvement, it wasn't likely that Dr Drummond was going "outside
the congregation" for anything he required. It would have been on a par

with a wandering tendency in his flock, upon which he systematically
frowned. He was as great an autocrat in this as the rector of any country
parish in England undermined by Dissent; but his sense of obligation
worked unfailingly both ways.
John Murchison had not said much about the sermon; it wasn't his way,
and Dr Drummond knew it. "You gave us a good sermon last night,
Doctor"; not much more than that, and "I noticed the Milburns there;
we don't often get Episcopalians"; and again, "The Wilcoxes"--Thomas
Wilcox, wholesale grocer, was the chief prop of St Andrew's--"were
sitting just in front of us. We overtook them going home, and Wilcox
explained how much they liked the music. 'Glad to see you,' I said.
'Glad to see you for any reason,'" Mr Murchison's eye twinkled. "But
they had a great deal to say about 'the music.'" It was not an effusive
form of felicitation; the minister would have liked it less if it had been,
felt less justified, perhaps, in remembering about the range on that
particular morning. As it was, he was able to take it with perfect dignity
and good humour, and to enjoy the point against the Wilcoxes with that
laugh of his that did everybody good to hear; so hearty it was, so rich in
the grain of the voice, so full of the zest and flavour of the joke. The
range had been selected, and their talk of changes had begun with it, Mr
Murchison pointing out the new idea in the boiler and Dr Drummond
remembering his first kitchen stove that burned wood and stood on its
four legs, with nothing behind but the stove pipe, and if you wanted a
boiler you took off the front lids and put it on, and how remarkable
even that had seemed to his eyes, fresh from the conservative kitchen
notions of the old country. He had come, unhappily, a widower to the
domestic improvements on the other side of the Atlantic. "Often I used
to think," he said to Mr Murchison, "if my poor wife could have seen
that stove how delighted she would have been! But I doubt this would
have been too much for her altogether!"
"That stove!" answered Mr Murchison. "Well I