Letters of Peregrine PickleUpton, George P. (George Putnam)
General
Letters of Peregrine Pickle
Upton, George P. (George Putnam)
Chicago (Ill.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Old Muslin D. Laine, who smiles and smirks and bows to and fawns upon
his customers, and grinds his clerks into the dust; who hands My Lady
to her carriage with gracious, grinning suavity, and grinds the noses
of his employees; who irritates, goads and worries his clerks with
regulations as petty as they are tyrannical; who exacts constant,
unremitting toil to the uttermost second, alike in rain and sunshine,
in a store full of customers and a store empty; who pays a man well
for doing woman's work, and pays a woman a pittance for doing the
same; who plays the petty tyrant over the slaves of his counter--he
is a whited sepulchre, and his sepulchre is full of those who will
confront him at the Great Assize.
Rev. Augustus Fitz-Herbert, who pays more attention to his linen
than to his text; who parts his hair with more care than he writes
his discourses; who is sweet at a wedding and ravenish at a funeral;
who toadies to his wealthy parishioners; who consigns the poor devil
to eternal torment and glosses over the failings of Croesus; who
takes to the young ladies' aid societies and neglects the maternal
meetings; who, in the capacity of a shepherd, prefers a tender young
ewe to a faithful old sheep; who feeds fat on the good things of
earth and forgets those in the highways and byways; who can tell
you the last new ritualistic fashion of robe, but knows little of
the spiritual fashion of the great congregation--he is a whited
sepulchre, and his sepulchre is full of deceit.
Young Boosey, who is the product of the tailor and the bootmaker,
and never saw either of their autographs; who wears immaculate
mutton-chops and swallow-tails; who varies with each changing wind
of fashion; who simpers and lolls in your opera-box, my Dear Child,
talks very softly in your ear, and is vulgar and profane away from
you; whose highest ambition reaches his neck-tie and whose idea of
Paradise is a place where all the good fellows go, to dress and show
themselves to the female cherubs and angels--he is a whited sepulchre
and his sepulchre is full of nothing.
There are other whited sepulchres, my dear Aurelia, whom you may
detect by slight observation. They cannot conceal the fact that they
are whited. Their exteriors are not even plausible, so dense is the
growth of noxious weeds about them. You can easily test your true
gentleman. He carries his colors in his face, in his walk, in his
clothes, in his manners. You will not do well to accept every St.
Elmo who comes along under the impression that he will turn out to
be a parson. The St. Elmos who start off as scoundrels always remain
so, Miss Evans notwithstanding. Cain was not the only man who had his
forehead branded. And, if you look carefully, my dear, at the whited
sepulchres, which are full of vice, you will discover the sign on the
front door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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