Jerome, Mr. Thomas

A retired corn-factor of Milby, a benevolent Dissenter, and one of Mr. Tryan's firm supporters. "If you had heard the tone of mingled good-will, veneration, and condolence in which this greeting was uttered, even without seeing the face that completely har monized with it, you would have no difficulty in inferring the ground-notes of Mr. Jerome's character. To a fine ear that tone said as plainly as possible—'Whatever recommends itself to me, Thomas Jerome, as piety and goodness, shall have my love and honour. Ah, friends, this pleasant world is a sad one, too, isn't it? Let us help one another, let us help one another.' And it was entirely owing to this basis of character, not at all from any clear and precise doctrinal discrimination, that Mr. Jerome had very early in life become a Dissenter. In his boyish days he had been thrown where Dissent seemed to have the balance of piety, purity, and good works on its side, and to become a Dissenter seemed to him identical with choosing God instead of mammon." The lists of originals prepared in Nuneaton after the publication of Scenes of Clerical Life, the original of Mr. Jerome was given as a Mr. Everard. (See Olcott, George Eliot, p. 16.)

<em>Janet's Repentance</em>

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