On Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons Canon Beecher enjoyed the privilege of a fire in his study.

He was supposed to be engaged at these seasons in the preparation of his sermons, a serious and exacting work which demanded solitude and profound quiet.

In earlier years he really had prepared his sermons painfully, but long practice brings to the preacher a certain fatal facility.

Old ideas are not improved by being clothed in new phrases, and of new ideas--a new idea will occasionally obtrude itself even on the Christian preacher--the Canon was exceedingly mistrustful.

The study was an unexciting and comparatively comfortable room.