He gave up the Church on his engagement, in consequence of his _fiancee's_ objection to becoming a minister's wife.
She said she could never 'tumble to' the district visiting.
"With the curate's wedding the old pauper's brief career of prosperity ended.

They packed him off to the workhouse after that, and made him break stones." * * * * * At the end of the telling of his tale, MacShaughnassy lifted his feet off the mantelpiece, and set to work to wake up his legs; and Jephson took a hand, and began to spin us stories.
But none of us felt inclined to laugh at Jephson's stories, for they dealt not with the goodness of the rich to the poor, which is a virtue yielding quick and highly satisfactory returns, but with the goodness of the poor to the poor, a somewhat less remunerative investment and a different matter altogether.
For the poor themselves--I do not mean the noisy professional poor, but the silent, fighting poor--one is bound to feel a genuine respect.

One honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.
In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand always in the van.

They die in the ditches, and we march over their bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.
One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought to be a little bit ashamed of living in security and ease, leaving them to take all the hard blows.

It is as if one were always skulking in the tents, while one's comrades were fighting and dying in the front.
They bleed and fall in silence there.