Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
and beat toy drums for their own amusement. On one side just over a
hedge, an admiring party are witnessing a boxing match between two
yokels, who are giving and taking real blows in dead earnest, while just
beyond is a Punch and Judy show, which always has been popular in
England, and will be to the end of time. All along the dusty road are
men over come with liquor, sleeping the sleep that only the drunkard
knows, with faces upturned to the hot sun. They are perfectly safe, and
will not be disturbed. Every Englishman of the lower class knows all
about it, and as for robbery, all that he has on him couldn't be pawned
for a penny. Next to the boxing match was a street preacher of some
denomination, armed with his testament and hymn-book, "holding forth" to
a throng constantly coming and going. I didn't hear this one, for we
were too much on pleasure bent to stop for a sermon, be it ever so good
or our need for it ever so great. But I did hear one on the grounds, and
a curious sermon it was. There was no Miss Nancying about that preacher.
He did not attempt to win his hearers by depicting the delights of a
heaven for piety on this earth, not any. He knew his hearers too well.
The lower grade Englishman might try to be good to escape a hell, but no
one ever conceived a heaven that would win him. His idea of a heaven is
a pot-house, with plenty of beer, and bread and cheese, and nothing to
do. And so the preacher sang the hymn:--
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead,"
In which his audience joined, some devoutly and some jeeringly.
[Sidenote: THE ROAD-SIDE EVANGELIST.]
And he pictured hell in such lurid colors as to frighten the most
hardened. He had no fancy for a hell, such as American clergymen talk
about, which consists merely in being deprived of the company of angels
and all that sort of thing, but he had a substantial, real hell, with
actual fire and brimstone and real devils with red hot pitch-forks,
toasting and gridling sinners, and rivers of fire, and perpetual
torments of this cheerful kind, forever and forever. That was the kind
of a hell he had.
It had its effect. One man who stood listening, with his wife, said to
her as they turned away:
"Weel, Jenny, 'ell is a hawful thing, I don't knaw but what I'll turn
around and do better, hafter to-morrow."
And the wife assenting to this proposition they went to the nearest beer
place and buried their countenances and their consciences, or their
fright rather, in pots of beer that would swamp the most seasoned
American, and a few moments after were dancing like mad in a booth
constructed for the purpose.