Work, work, work; the vicar, his three curates and band of lay helpers, worked incessantly.
Besides his strictly parochial duties, the vicar wrote a manual for use in the schools, he attended the Chambers of Agriculture, and supported certain social movements among the farmers; he attended meetings, and, both socially and politically, by force of character, energy, and the gift of speech, became a power in the country side.

Still striving onwards, he wrote in London periodicals, he published a book, he looked from the silence of his gaunt study towards the great world, and sometimes dreamed of what he might have done had he not been buried in the country, and of what he might even yet accomplish.

All who came in contact with him felt the influence of his concentrated purpose: one and all, after they had worked their hardest, thought they had still not done so much as he would have done.
The man's charm of manner was not to be resisted; he believed his office far above monarchs, but there was no personal pretension.

That gentle, pleasing manner, with the sense of intellectual power behind it, quite overcame the old folk.

They all spoke with complacent pride of 'our vicar'; and, what was more, opened their purses.