Esther Denison Author:Adeline Sergeant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. . DISCORD. " The woes of men are the work of their own hands." "TTSTHER was ten years old before any sense of dis- £2, cord in the household b... more »ecame clear to her. The Denisons were living in a Gloucestershire village, where they had spent three years. To this place they had come from a large manufacturing town in the north of England, having previously sojourned for an equal length of time in Penzance. These changes from place to place, at remote distances sometimes from one another, were in accordance with the set rule of a Methodist preacher's life ; but James Denison fared worse than most of his brethren because he had a private superstition about the choice of a place of residence. He might have managed things better if he had liked. There was a committee of ministers who provided every preacher with a cure of souls, which he held for one, two, or at most three years. Every August, therefore, a large proportion of the ministers changed places ; indeed they were shuffled like a pack of cards ; but an invitation from a . congregation to a minister always had weight with the committee, and might be provisionally accepted, with a fair prospect that the appointment would be ratified by the adjusting powers. It was with respect to these invitations that the Reverend James Denison had singular ideas. Temper, not trouble, makes the misery of most men's lives. James Denison's temper was irritable, in spite of his religious sensibility ; perhaps we oughtto say because of it. With conscience and self-interest perpetually at war, religious sensibility did little but exasperate his temper ; and his family bore the consequences. Mrs. Denison sat at the breakfast-table, pouring out tea. She had a frail look ; she was very thin, and the tints of her complexion, o...« less