Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/29

4 As far back as I can remember, my father and mother were strict Dissenters. They had been Church of England people, and great theatre-goers in the earlier days of their marriage. I discovered this latter fact by peeping into a cupboard, the door of which had been left unlocked, and seeing rolls of flimsy, coarsely printed paper, which after experience told me were playbills.

One of my brothers, two sisters, and I were taken of a Sunday morning to Craven Chapel in some court leading out of Regent Street. The chapel still exists, though it seems much smaller than when I used to hear sermons there. The minister was Dr. Leifchild, a goodly, portly man with a sonorous voice and good staying powers. His discourses appeared to the childish mind of inordinate length, and perhaps a little ponderous in matter. We children used to be examined by our parents on the sermon in the afternoon, and expected to remember at least the “ heads ” of it ; but as the Doctor would sometimes go so far as “tenthly and lastly,” it was not often we could repeat them with anything like accuracy. The closeness of the atmosphere in the chapel, combined with the eloquent denunciations of the preacher, would often send me to sleep, or cause bleeding at the nose, which enlarged the pattern on my coloured frock. Then would my father lead me home, calling on the family doctor by the way, who