Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/69

 my father swear it a hundred times—" The Colonel belonged to a class, not uncommon in Virginia, who regarded the Episcopal Church as a close corporation, and resented with great pugnacity any attempt to enter it on the part of the great unwashed. It was the vehicle chosen by the first families to go to heaven in, and marked "Reserved." Hence the Colonel's wrath. His church was a church founded by gentlemen, of gentlemen, and for gentlemen, and it was a great liberty for any other class to seek that aristocratic mode of salvation.

"Now, damme, the Hibbses are the greatest Episcopalians in the parish. I am as good a churchman as there is in the county, but begad, if I want such a set of vulgarians worshiping under the same roof and rubbing elbows with me when I go up to the Lord's table. I think I gave that young Hibbs fellow a setback last communion Sunday which will prevent him from hustling up to the rail before his betters."

By which it will be seen that Dashaway's unlucky fiasco and the triumph of the long-legged roan at Campdown had not been obliterated from the Colonel's memory. During the sermon, Colonel Berkeley only took his eyes off the clergyman once. This was when Mr. Hibbs came around with the collection plate. The object of that day's collection was, as Mr. Cole had feelingly stated, for the conversion of the higher castes in India. Colonel Berkeley thrust both hands in his trousers' pockets, and sur