Humphrey Clay, for all the grimness of his words and works, must have been a joyous man, for his spirit was very powerful and roused many men to action. True, their actions were all ugly, but that came from their stupidity and the squalor of their surroundings. There is no country on the north of our town for thirty miles--only smoked bricks and mortar and tall chimneys and colliery stacks. On the south you must go seven miles before you will find a truly green field, and most of us are quite old before we can make such a pilgrimage, and then clear air and trees and streams and sky and the song of birds are things as separate from our lives as our dreams. They are almost a show to us. Our great holiday is Whitsun-week, and then each church takes its children in wagonettes and char-à-bancs out into the nearest semblance of green country, where they wander and play and laugh and squabble and are fed until they can hardly stand. It is called a "treat," and it gives them a new zest for the streets and their adventurous, strangely independent life.
The Roman Catholic churches organise processions which meet in the centre of the town and wind through the streets, the little girls in white and the little boys in the best they can muster.
In his fourth article Flynn exhorted Francis to be an honest man and take his flock to join them. In the meanwhile there had been appeals to the bishop, who refused to move in the matter, being convinced, from what he had seen, that there was nothing uncanonical in the conduct of the services at St. Paul's. He liked Francis, and if he could not altogether approve of the means, the result was eminently satisfactory. As a result of Flynn's campaign there was hardly ever a seat to be had in St. Paul's on Sundays, and some of the most noted preachers in our town and the surrounding district were glad to appear in the pulpit.
Flynn's paper was doing very well out of it. All sorts of people rushed into the fray and filled his columns for nothing, and when his supporters took to interrupting the services at St. Paul's with vehement protests the other papers took the matter up, and Francis found a sort of greatness thrust upon him. He refused to see reporters, and told one persistent Scotsman that it was Flynn's affair, not his, and that he had no intention of moving against Flynn. He received many letters denouncing him as Anti-Christ, and many more proclaiming him the one Spiritual Hope of the North of England. More than one of his correspondents enclosed poems.