Der Praefekt

On the whole Mr Harding was
    of opinion that things were managed better at Barchester, though even
    there he knew that there was room for improvement.
     
    It appears to us a question whether any clergyman can go through our
    church service with decorum, morning after morning, in an immense
    building, surrounded by not more than a dozen listeners. Die besten
    actors cannot act well before empty benches, and though there is, of
    course, a higher motive in one case than the other, still even the
    best of clergymen cannot but be influenced by their audience; and to
    expect that a duty should be well done under such circumstances, would
    be to require from human nature more than human power.
     
    When the two ladies with the gilt crosses, the old man with his
    crutch, and the still palpitating housemaid were going, Mr Harding
    found himself obliged to go too.  The verger stood in his way, and
    looked at him and looked at the door, and so he went.  But he returned
    again in a few minutes, and re-entered with another twopence. Es
    was no other sanctuary so good for him.
     
    As he walked slowly down the nave, and then up one aisle, and then
    again down the nave and up the other aisle, he tried to think gravely
    of the step he was about to take.  He was going to give up eight
    hundred a year voluntarily; and doom himself to live for the rest of
    his life on about a hundred and fifty.  He knew that he had hitherto
    failed to realise this fact as he ought to do.  Could he maintain
    his own independence and support his daughter on a hundred and fifty
    pounds a year without being a burden on anyone?  His son-in-law was
    rich, but nothing could induce him to lean on his son-in-law after
    acting, as he intended to do, in direct opposition to his son-in-law’s
    Anwalt. The bishop was rich, but he was about to throw away the
    bishop’s best gift, and that in a manner to injure materially the
    patronage of the giver: he could neither expect nor accept anything
    further from the bishop.  There would be not only no merit, but
    positive disgrace, in giving up his wardenship, if he were not
    prepared to meet the world without it.  Yes, he must from this time
    forward bound all his human wishes for himself and his daughter to
    the poor extent of so limited an income.  He knew he had not thought
    sufficiently of this, that he had been carried away by enthusiasm,
    and had hitherto not brought home to himself the full reality of his
    Position.
     
    He thought most about his daughter, naturally.  It was true that she
    was engaged, and he knew enough of his proposed son-in-law to be sure
    that his own altered circumstances would make no obstacle to such a
    marriage; nay, he was sure that the very fact of his poverty would
    induce Bold more anxiously to press the matter; but he disliked
    counting on Bold in this emergency, brought on, as it had been, by
    his doing.  He did not like saying to himself, Bold has turned me
    out of my house and income, and, therefore, he must relieve me of my
    daughter; he preferred reckoning on Eleanor as the companion of his
    poverty and exile,—as the sharer of his small income.
     
    Some modest provision for his daughter had been long since made. Sein
    life was insured for three thousand pounds, and this sum was to go to
    Eleanor. The archdeacon, for some years past, had paid the premium,
    and had secured himself by the immediate possession of a small
    property which was to have gone to Mrs Grantly after her father’s
    Tod. This matter, therefore, had been taken out of the warden’s
    hands long since, as, indeed, had all the business transactions of
    his family, and his anxiety was, therefore, confined to his own life
    Einkommen.
     
    Ja. A hundred and fifty per annum was very small, but still it might
    suffice; but how was he to chant the litany at the cathedral on Sunday
    mornings, and get the service done at Crabtree Parva?  True, Crabtree
    Church was not quite a mile and a half from the cathedral; but he
    could not be in two places at once.  Crabtree was a small village,
    and afternoon service might suffice, but still this went against his
    conscience; it was not right that his parishioners should be robbed
    of any of their privileges on account of his poverty.  He might, to
    be sure, make some arrangements for doing week-day service at the
    cathedral; but he had chanted the litany at Barchester so long, and
    had a conscious feeling that he did it so well, that he was unwilling
    to give