In Druidism, he observed--I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby--you had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not else.

He read portions of his privately-published _Tales of Taliessin_.

In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion.

The Church of Britain might be stiff and stomachered, as the offspring of Elizabeth, but it was stately, it was respectable--as outwardly was the great virgin Queen--and it was easy to live with.

Only he counselled his father to do two things: never to preach for more than half-an-hour--even if it meant keeping a small American clock going inside the pulpit-ledge; and to obtain a curate, so that the new enthusiasm might not cool and his father verging on seventy, might not overstrain himself.