Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind.

"He has women at his back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his favourite _Brand_.

Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at his side?
It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion.

It was now the autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev.Theophilus Londonderry; Rob Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished lecturers, at New Zion.
In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," "A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," by Mr.Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by Mr.Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr.James Whalley, with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on "Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago! The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance.
For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place.

A large cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, London, _via_ a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr.Littlejohn ?" Mr.Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life.
No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in Coalchester.
And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room.
"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as they opened the parcel.