Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/97



T must be regarded for many reasons as unfortunate that Mrs. Crossley, the Archdeacon's wife, had no children. The lot of her husband's parishioners would have been pleasanter, and the Archdeacon himself would have been spared a great deal of anxiety and worry if there had been eight or ten young Crossleys. The lady herself would have been much happier, because she would have escaped the heartbreak of discovering the vanity of human enthusiasms.

Mrs. Crossley was vigorous and energetic. No one had ever known her rest from the effort to accomplish some great work. Once she was smitten with a wish to eliminate drunkenness from among the scourges which afflict humanity. She argued, most logically, that if everyone were a total abstainer there would be no drunkards, and having reached this conclusion, set about persuading and coercing people into signing pledges. A women's temperance guild, consisting for the most part of the wives and daughters of dissenting ministers, welcomed an Archdeacon's wife as a valuable recruit, and she was promptly elected president. For two years she preached her crusade to rather scanty audiences in Methodist and Presbyterian