The Caravaners by Elizabeth Von Arnim — Read

I am accustomed punctually to discharge my obligations in what may be called celestial directions, holding it to be every man's duty not to put a millstone round a weaker vessel's neck by omitting to set a good example. Also, in the best sense of the word, I am a religious man. Did not Bismarck say, and has not the saying become part and parcel of the marrow of the nation, "We Germans fear God and nothing else in the world"? In exactly, I should say, the same way and degree as Bismarck was, am I religious. At Storchwerder, where I am known, I go to church every alternate Sunday and allow myself to be advised and cautioned by the pastor, willing to admit it is his turn to speak and recognizing that he is paid to do so, but reserving to myself the right to put him and keep him in his proper place during the fourteen secular days that divide these pious oases. Before our daily dinner also I say grace, a rare thing in households where there are no children to look on; and if I do not, as a few of the stricter households do, conduct family prayers every day, it is because I do not like them.

There is, after all, a limit at which duty must retire before a man's personal tastes. We are not solely machines for discharging obligations. I see perfectly clearly that it is most good and essential that one's cook and wife should pray together, and even one's orderly, but I do not see that they require the assistance and countenance of the gentleman of the house while they do it.