Two years before , Allan Telford , fresh from college and full of vigorous enthusiasm and high ideas , would have said : `` No , that is not for me . My work must lie among the poor and lowly of earth as did my Master 's . Shall I shrink from it because , to worldly eyes , the way looks dreary and uninviting ? '' Now , looking back on his two years ' ministry , he said wearily : `` I can remain here no longer . If I do , I fear I shall sink down into something almost as pitiful as one of these canting , gossiping people myself . I can do them no good -- they do not like or trust me . I will accept this call and go back to my own world . '' Perhaps the keynote of his failure was sounded in his last words , `` my own world . '' He had never felt , or tried to feel , that this narrow sphere was his own world . It was some lower level to which he had come with good tidings and honest intentions but , unconsciously , he had held himself above it , and his people felt and resented this . They expressed it by saying he was `` stuck-up . '' Rykman 's Corner came into view as he drove over the brow of a long hill . He hated the place , knowing it well for what it was -- a festering hotbed of gossip and malice , the habitat of all the slanderous rumours and innuendoes that permeated the social tissue of the community . The newest scandal , the worst-flavoured joke , the latest details of the most recent quarrel , were always to be had at Rykman 's store . As the minister drove down the hill , a man came out of a small house at the foot and waited on the road . Had it been possible Telford would have pretended not to see him , but it was not possible , for Isaac Galletly meant to be seen and hailed the minister cheerfully . `` Good mornin ' , Mr. Telford . Ye wo n't mind giving me a lift down to the Corner , I dessay ? '' Telford checked his horse reluctantly and Galletly crawled into the cutter . He was that most despicable of created beings , a male gossip , and he spent most of his time travelling from house to house in the village , smoking his pipe in neighbourly kitchens and fanning into an active blaze all the smouldering feuds of the place .
He had been nicknamed `` The Morning Chronicle '' by a sarcastic schoolteacher who had sojourned a winter at the XXXXX .
Corner enthusiasm hill house keynote ministry place road scandal way