different from what he has been used to.
Now dissent, as you know, has been the bugbear of the Doctor through
life. The very name carries with it something inexpressibly dreadful,
and among the most terrifying to him of all the forms of dissent was
that of Rome. But lately, a vast number of bright eyes have been
lifted to the ceiling, and a great many beautiful lips opened, and a
great many sweet voices raised in opposition to any hostile allusion
to the objects of his abhorrence. "The church of Fenelon," says one
in a reverential tone, "can surely not be altogether apostate." "The
church of the two Gregories, the church of A'Beckett and Dunstan, of
St Senanus, St Januarius, and the Seven Champions of Christendom,
can never have fallen away from the faith," exclaims Miss Tinderella
Swainlove in a very contemptuous tone, when the Doctor contrasts the
great and ambitious names of Rome with the humility required in a
Christian pastor. "In short, Dr Smiler, we wish to know," she said
not a week ago, when she had gone up to the parsonage to practise a
Gregorian chant on Christina Smiler's concertina--"we wish to know,
Doctor Smiler, whether religion consists in bare plaster walls and a
cassock?" "Certainly not, my dear Tinderella, but you will observe"--
"Oh, we only want an answer to that question," said the young lady,
interrupting; "for, allow me to tell you, we feel our devotion greatly
excited by the noble solemnity of a service decently conducted with
albe and chasuble, in a building fitted for its high destination by the
richest combination of architecture and the arts."
Tinderella is nineteen years of age, and as decided in her manner as a
field-marshal. "May I ask, my dear, who the 'we' are in whose name you
speak?" inquired the rector.
"Not Mr Ruggles the grocer, nor Chipper the carpenter, but all who
are qualified by their fortune, and position in life, to judge on the
subject," was Tinderella's spirited rejoinder.
"Really," said the Doctor, "you young ladies are very much changed
from what you were. Two years ago, I used to have great difficulty in
keeping you from balls and archeries, and had frequent occasion to
lecture you for inattention in church. What, in the name of wonder, has
come over you all?"
"Do you find fault with us for having given up frivolities, and turned
reverent and attentive during the service?" inquired his questioner
with a sneer.
"Far from it, my dear,--very far from it; but I should like very much
to know what is the cause of the change. I trust, my dear Tinderella,
it isn't connected with the marriage of Lieutenant Polker, with whom I
remember you danced every night last winter."
"Lieutenant Polker," replied Tinderella, "has married a dissenter, or a
person of low church principles, and that is as bad, and he has nothing
whatever to do with our duty to the Holy Catholic Church I assure you,
sir."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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