“Pulpit oratory! I don't know what it is, only I never heard the like
of it in all my born days. I begin to think the real difference between
preachers is the difference of the fire beneath the crust. In some it
burns so low that it doesn't even warm the surface, and you couldn't get
up enough puff to boil the kitchen kettle; but in others--look out! It's
a volcano, and the lava is coming down with a rush.
“Mercy me, how I cried! 'Oh, my daughter, oh, my child, what a ninny you
are!' I told myself; but it was no use talking. His voice was as hoarse
as a raven's, and sometimes you would have thought his very heart was
breaking.
“But the congregation! You should have seen the transformation scene!
They had come in bowing and smiling and whispering softly until the
church was a perfect sheet of sunshine, an absolute aurora borealis; but
they went out like a northeast gale, with mutterings of thunder and one
man overboard.
“And John Storm having put his foot in it, of course Glory Quayle had
to get her toe in too. Coming down the aisle some of the dear ladies
of Zion, who looked as if they wanted to 'swear in their wrath,' were
mumbling all the lamentations of Jeremiah. Who was he, indeed, to talk
to people like that? Nobody had ever heard of him except his mother.
And in the porch they came upon a fat old dump in a velvet dollman
who declared it was perfectly scandalous, and she had come out in the
middle. Whereupon Glory, not being delivered that day from all evil and
mischief, said, 'Quite right, ma'am, and you were not the only one who
had to leave the church in the middle of that sermon.' 'Why, who else
had to go?' said this female Pharisee. 'The devil, ma'am!' said Glory,
and then left her with that bone to gnaw.
“It turns out that the old girlie in the dollman is a mighty patron of
this hospital, so everybody says I am in for nasty weather. But hoot!
My heart's in the Hielan's, my heart is not here; my heart's in the
Hielan's, sae what can I fear!
“John Storm is in for it too, and they say his vicar waited for him
in the vestry, but he looked like forked lightning coming out of the
pulpit, so the good man thought it better to keep his rod in pickle
awhile. It seems that the Lords of the Council and all the nobility were
there, and it is a point of religious etiquette in London that in the
hangman's house nobody speaks of the rope; but our poor John gave them
the gibbet as well. It was a fearful thing to do, but nobody will make
me believe he had not got his reasons. He hasn't been here since, but
I am certain he has his eye on some fine folks, and, whoever they are,
I'll bet 'my bottom dollar' they deserved all they got.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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