Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
“By all means; that will be the best way of making friends again. I need
not tell you that a jail could not go on in which the governor and the
chaplain did not pull together. The fact is, Mr. Jones, the clergy, of
late, have been assuming a little too much, and that has made the
laity a little jealous. Now, although you are a clergyman, you are her
majesty's servant so long as you are here, and must co-operate with the
general system of the jail. Come, sir, you are younger than I am; let me
give you a piece of advice, 'DON'T OVERSTEP YOUR DUTY,' etc.”
In this strain Mr. Williams buz, buz, buzzed longer than I can afford
him paper, it is so dear. He pumped a stream of time-honored phrases
on his hearer, and dissolved away with him as the overflow of a pump
carries away a straw on its shallow stream down a stable-yard.
When the pump was pumped dry he stopped.
Then the chaplain, who had listened with singular politeness, got in a
word. “You forget, sir, I have resigned the chaplaincy of the jail?”
“Oh! ah! yes! well, then, I need say no more; good-day, Mr. Jones.”
“Good-morning, sir.”
Soon after this up came Hawes with a cheerful countenance.
“Well, parson, are you to manage the prisoners and I to preach to them,
or are we to go on as we are?”
“Things are to go on as they are, Mr. Hawes; but that is nothing to
me, I have discharged my conscience. I have remonstrated against the
seventies practiced on our prisoners. COLD WATER HAS BEEN THROWN ON MY
REMONSTRANCES, and I shall therefore interfere no more.”
“That is the wise way to look at it, you may depend!”
“We shall see which was in the right. I have discharged my conscience.
But, Mr. Hawes, I am hurt you should say I preached a sermon against
you.”
“I dare say you are, sir, but who began it; if you had not talked of
complaining to the justices of me, I should never have said a word
against you.”
“That is all settled; but it is due to my character to show you that
I had no intention of pointing at you or any living creature from the
pulpit.”
“Well, make me believe that.”
“If you will do me the favor to come to my room I can prove it to you.”
The chaplain took the governor to his room and opened two drawers in a
massive table.
“Mr. Hawes,” said he, “do you see this pile of sermons in this
right-hand drawer?”
“I see them,” said Hawes, with a doleful air, “and I suppose I shall
hear some of them before long.”
“These,” said Mr. Jones, smiling with perfect good-humor at the
innocuous sneer, “are sermons I composed when I was curate of
Little-Stoke. Of late I have been going regularly through my
Little-Stoke discourses, as you may see. I take one from the pile in
this drawer, and after first preaching it in the jail I place it in the
left drawer on that smaller pile.”
“That you mayn't preach it again by accident; well, that is business.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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