The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
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 headmaster
(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 the 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 forever practicing, 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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