Christian fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Richard was glad to hear it, thinking he meant to give him another room,
and said he could work just as well anywhere else: he wanted only a dry
room with a fire-place! Arthur told him he had arranged for what would
be more agreeable to both parties, namely, that he should do the work at
home. It would cost more, but he was prepared for that. He might go
as soon as he pleased, and they would arrange by letter how the books
should be sent--so many at a time!
Richard spied something more under his dismissal than the affair
with Miss Vixen; but he was too proud to ask for an explanation:
Mr. Lestrange was in the right of their compact. He felt aggrieved
notwithstanding, and was sorry to go away from the library. He would
never again have the chance of restoring such a library! He did not once
think of it from the point of gain: he could always make his living!
It was to him a genuine pleasure to cause any worthy volume look as it
ought to look; and to make a whole straggling library of books
wasted and worn, put on the complexion, uniform, and discipline of
a well-conditioned company of the host of heaven, was at least an
honourable task! For what are books, I venture to say, but an army-corps
of the lord of hosts, at whose command are troops of all natures, after
the various regions of his indwelling! Even the letter is something,
for the dry bones of books are every hour coming alive to the reader in
whose spirit is blowing the better spirit. Richard himself was one of
such, though he did not yet know there was a better spirit. Then again,
there were not a few of the books with which individually he was sorry
to part. He had also had fine opportunity for study, of which he was
making good use, and the loss of it troubled him. He had read some
books he would hardly otherwise have been able to read, and had largely
extended his acquaintance with titles.
He was sorry too not to see more of Mr. Wingfold. He was a clergyman,
it was true, but not the least like any other clergyman he had seen!
Richard had indeed known nothing of any other clergyman out of the
pulpit; and I fear most clergymen are less human, therefore less divine,
in the pulpit than out of it! Many who out of the pulpit appear men, are
in it little better than hawkers of old garments, the worse for their
new patches. Of the forces in action for the renovation of the world,
the sale of such old clothes is one of the least potent. They do,
however, serve a little, I think, even as the rags of a Neapolitan for
the olives of Italy, as a sort of manure for the young olives of the
garden of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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