English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out,
and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being
whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford
let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, having
previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the
young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.
Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a
bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of
Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend
bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the
Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have
to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . .
Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops
powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest,
my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.
To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but imagine all
women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and
I have the honor to move. Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair
criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered! There is Mrs. Longbow, who
is for ever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you
meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness
she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most
respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying
what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana
Hunter--what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about
her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of
the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your
children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so
handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be if we were
all found out, and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be in
permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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