 19 This much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having lived to be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich, he must have been in very fair harmony with his surroundings. I have heard it said, sometimes, that such and such a person's life was a lie. But no man's life can be a very bad lie. As long as it continues at all, it is at worst nine-tenths of it true. Mr. Pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but was prosperous right up to the end. Is this not enough? Being in this world, is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it? To observe what things do bona fide tend to long life and comfort, and to act accordingly? All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. And they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow. He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. If Mr. Pontifex is to be blamed, it is for not having eaten and drunk less, and thus suffered less from his liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer. Goodness is not unless it tends toward old age and sufficiency of means. I speak broadly and acceptus excipiendus, so the psalmist says, the righteous shall not lack anything that is good. Either this is mere poetical license, or it follows that he who lacks anything that is good is not righteous. There is a presumption also that he who has passed a long life without lacking anything that is good has himself also been good enough for practical purposes. Mr. Pontifex never lacked anything he much cared about. True he might have been happier than he was if he had cared about things which he did not care for, but the gist of this lies in the if he had cared. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done. But in this particular case Mr. Pontifex did not care, and would not have gained much by getting what he did not want. There is no casting of swine's meat before men worse than that which would flatter virtue as though her true origin were not good enough for her. But she must have a lineage deduced as it were by spiritual heralds, from some stock with which she had nothing to do. Virtue's true lineage is older and more respectable than any that can be invented for her. She springs from man's experience concerning his own well-being, and this, though not infallible, is still the least fallible thing we have. A system which cannot stand without a better foundation than this must have something so unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal we place it. The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are what bring men peace at the last. Be virtuous, says the copy book, and you will be happy. Surely if a reputed virtue fails often in this respect, it is only an insidious form of vice, and if a reputed vice brings no very serious mischief on a man's later years, it is not so bad a vice as it is said to be. Unfortunately, though we are all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is what tends to happiness, and vice what ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous about details. That is to say, as to whether any given course, such we will say as smoking, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse. I submit it as the result of my own poor observation that a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the parents themselves. They may cast a gloom over their children's lives for many years without having to suffer anything that will hurt them. I should say then that it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make their children's lives a burden to them. Granted that Mr. Pontifex's was not a very exalted character. Ordinary men are not required to have very exalted characters. It is enough if we are the same moral and mental stature as the main or mean part of men. That is to say, the average. It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die old shall have been mean. The greatest and wisest of mankind will be almost always found to be the meanest, the ones who have kept the mean best between excess either of virtue or vice. They hardly ever have been prosperous if they have not done this. And considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small feather in a man's cap if he has been no worse than his neighbors. Homer tells us about someone who made it his business always to excel and to stand higher than other people. What an uncompanionable, disagreeable person he must have been. Homer's heroes generally came to a bad end and I doubt not that this gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later. A very high standard again involves the possession of rare virtues. And rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things, neither of which had with it anything of the other. This is not so. There is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice and hardly any vice if any, which carries not with it a little dash of virtue. Virtue and vice are like life and death or mind and matter. Things which cannot exist without being qualified by their opposite. The most absolute life contains death and the corpse is still in many respects living. So also it has been said, if thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, which shows that even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet admit so much compromise with vice as shall countenance the poor abuses of the time if they are not too outrageous. That vice pays homage to virtue is notorious. We call this hypocrisy. There should be a word found for the homage which virtue not unfrequently pays or at any rate would be wise in paying to vice. I grant that some men will find happiness in having what we all feel to be a higher moral standard than others. If they go in for this, however, they must be content with virtue as her own reward and not grumble if they find lofty quicksoughtism and expensive luxury whose rewards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. They must not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of both worlds. Disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts which record the growth of the Christian religion. Yet a great part of Christian teaching will remain as true as though we accepted the details. We cannot serve God and Mammon. Straight is the way and narrow is the gate which leads to what those who live by faith hold to be best worth having. And there is no way of saying this better than the Bible has done. It is well there should be some who think thus. And it is well there should be speculators in commerce who will often burn their fingers. But it is not well that the majority should leave the mean and beaten path. For most men and most circumstances, pleasure, tangible material prosperity in this world is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. To use a commercial metaphor, competition is so keen and the margin of profits has been cut down so closely that virtue cannot afford to throw any bona fide chance away and must base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than on a flattering prospectus. She will not therefore neglect as some do who are prudent and economical enough in other matters the important factor of our chance of escaping detection or at any rate of our dying first. A reasonable virtue will give this chance its due value, neither more nor less. Pleasure after all is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and if we go wrong with them will lead us into just a sorry applied as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. When men burn their fingers through following after pleasure, they find out their mistake and get to see where they have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through following after a fancy duty or a fancied idea concerning virtue. The devil in fact, when he dresses himself in angels clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill. And so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen talking to an angel at all. And prudent people will follow after pleasure as a more homely, but more respectable and on the whole much more trustworthy guide. Returning to Mr. Pontifex, over and above his having lived long and prosperously, he left numerous offspring to all of whom he communicated not only his physical and mental characteristics with no more than the usual amount of modification, but also no small share of characteristics which are less easily transmitted. I mean his pecuniary characteristics. It may be said that he acquired these by sitting still and letting money run as it were right up against him. But against how many does not money run who do not take it when it does? Or who, even if they hold it for a little while, cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it shall descend through them to their offspring? Mr. Pontifex did this. He kept what he may be said to have made, and money is like a reputation for ability, more easily made than kept. Take him then for all in all I am not inclined to be so severe upon him as my father was. Judge him according to any very lofty standard, and he is nowhere. Judge him according to a fair average standard, and there is not much fall to be found with him. I have said what I have said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and shall not break my thread to repeat it. It should go without saying in modification of the verdict which the reader may be inclined to pass too hastily, not only upon Mr. George Pontifex, but also upon Theobald and Christina. And now I will continue my story. CHAPTER XX The birth of his son opened Theobald's eyes to a good deal which he had but faintly realized hitherto. He had had no idea how great a nuisance a baby was. Babies come into the world so suddenly at the end and upset everything so terribly when they do come. Why cannot they steal in upon us with less of a shock to the domestic system? His wife, too, did not recover rapidly from her confinement. She remained an invalid for months. Here was another nuisance and an expensive one, which interfered with the amount which Theobald liked to put by out of his income against as he said a rainy day, or to make provision for his family if he should have one. Now he was getting a family, so that it became all the more necessary to put money by, and here was the baby hindering him. This may say what they like about a man's children being a continuation of his own identity, but it will generally be found that those who talk in this way have no children of their own. Practical family men know better. About twelve months after the birth of Ernest there came a second, also a boy, who was christened Joseph, and in less than twelve months afterwards a girl to whom was given the name of Charlotte. A few months before this girl was born, Christina paid a visit to the John Pontifexes in London, and knowing her condition, passed a good deal of time at the Royal Academy Exhibition looking at the types of female beauty portrayed by the academicians, for she had made up her mind that the child this time was to be a girl. Alathea warned her not to do this, but she persisted, and certainly the child turned out plain. But whether the pictures caused this or no, I cannot say. Theobald had never liked children. He had always got away from them as soon as he could, and so had they from him. Oh, why was he inclined to ask himself, could not children be born into the world grown up? If Christina could have given birth to a few full-grown clergymen and pre-sorders of moderate views but inclining rather to evangelicalism, with comfortable livings, and in all respects, facsimile as of Theobald himself. Why, there might have been more sense in it. Or if people could buy ready-made children at a shop of whatever age and sex they liked, instead of always having to make them at home and to begin at the beginning with them, that might do better. But as it was, he did not like it. He felt as he had felt when he had been required to come and be married to Christina. That he had been going on for a long time, quite nicely, and would much rather continue things on their present footing. In the matter of getting married, he had been obliged to pretend he liked it. But times were changed, and if he did not like a thing now, he could find a hundred unexceptionable ways of making his dislike apparent. It might have been better if Theobald and his younger days had kicked more against his father. The fact that he had not done so encouraged him to expect the most implicit obedience from his own children. He could trust himself, he said, and so did Christina. To be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself, his danger, he said, and so again did Christina, would be rather in the direction of being too indulgent. He must be on his guard against this for no duty could be more important than that of teaching a child to obey its parents in all things. He had read not long since of an Eastern traveler who, while exploring somewhere in the more remote parts of Arabia and Asia Minor, had come upon a remarkably hearty, sober, industrious little Christian community, all of them in the best of health, who had turned out to be the actual living descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rehkeb, and two men in European costume, indeed, but speaking English with a broken accent and by their color evidently oriental, had come begging to batters be soon afterward and represented themselves as belonging to this people. They had said they were collecting funds to promote the conversion of their fellow tribesmen to the English branch of the Christian religion. True, they turned out to be imposters for when he gave them a pound and Christina five shillings from her private purse. They went and got drunk with it in the next village, but one to batters be. Still, this did not invalidate the story of the Eastern traveler. Then there were the Romans, whose greatness was probably due to the wholesome authority exercised by the head of a family over all its members. Some Romans had even killed their children. This was going too far, but then the Romans were not Christians and knew no better. The practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction in Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Christina's, that it was their duty to begin training up their children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for and plucked up from the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald picked up this numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his bosom. Before Ernest could well crawl, he was taught to kneel. Before he could well speak, he was taught to lisp the Lord's prayer and the general confession. How is it possible that these things could be taught too early? If his attention flagged or his memory failed him, here was an ill weed which would grow apace unless it were plucked out immediately and the only way to pluck it out was to whip him or shut him up in a cupboard or dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood. Before he was three years old, he could read and after a fashion, write. Before he was four, he was learning Latin and could do rule of three sums. As for the child himself, he was naturally of an even temper. He doted upon his nurse on kittens and puppies and on all things that would do him the kindness of allowing him to be fond of them. He was fond of his mother too, but as regards his father, he had told me in later life he could remember no feeling but fear and shrinking. Christina did not remonstrate with Theobald concerning the severity of the tasks imposed upon the boy, nor yet as to the continual whippings that were found necessary at lesson times. Indeed, when during any absence of Theobalds, the lessons were entrusted to her, she found to her sorrow that it was the only thing to do and she did it no less effectually than Theobald himself. Nevertheless, she was fond of her boy, which Theobald never was and it was long before she could destroy all affection for herself in the mind of her firstborn. But she persevered. End of chapter 20. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 21 and 22 of The Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 21. Strange. For she believed she doted upon him and certainly she loved him better than either of her other children. Her version of the matter was that there had never yet been two parents so self-denying and devoted to the highest welfare of their children as Theobald and herself. For earnest, a very great future, she was certain of it, was in store. This made severity all the more necessary so that from the first he might have been kept pure from every taint of evil. She could not allow herself the scope for castle building, which, we read, was indulged by every Jewish matron before the appearance of the Messiah. For the Messiah had now come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, certainly not later than 1866, when earnest would be just about the right age for it and a modern Elias would be wanted to herald its approach. Heaven would bear her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of martyrdom for herself and Theobald, nor would she avoid it for her boy if his life were required of her in her redeemer's service. Oh, no. If God told her to offer up her firstborn as he had told Abraham, she would take him up to Pigbury Beacon and plunge the... No, that she could not do. But it would be unnecessary. Someone else might do that. It was not for nothing that earnest had been baptized in water from the Jordan. It had not been her doing, nor yet Theobalds. They had not sought it. When water from the sacred stream was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been found through which it was to flow from far Palestine over land and sea to the door of the house where the child was lying. Why, it was a miracle. It was, it was. She saw it all now. The Jordan had left its bed and flowed into her own house. It was idle to say that this was not a miracle. No miracle was affected without means of some kind. The difference between the faithful and the unbeliever consisted in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where the latter could not. The Jews could see no miracle even in the raising of Lazarus and the feeding of the 5,000. The John Pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of the water from the Jordan. The essence of a miracle lay not in the fact that means had been dispensed with but in the adoption of means to a great end that had not been available without interference. And no one would suppose that Dr. Jones would have brought the water unless he had been directed. She would tell this to Theobald and get him to see it in the, and yet perhaps it would be better not. The insight of women upon matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring than that of men. It was a woman and not a man who had been filled most completely with the whole fullness of the deity. But why had they not treasured up the water after it was used? It ought never, never to have been thrown away, but it had been. Perhaps however, this was for the best too. They might have been tempted to set too much store by it and it might have become a source of spiritual danger to them, perhaps even spiritual pride, the very sin of all others which she most abhorred. As for the channel through which the Jordan had flowed to Battersby, that mattered not more than the earth through which the river ran in Palestine itself. Dr. Jones was certainly worldly, very worldly. So she regretted to feel had been her father-in-law, though in a less degree, spiritual at heart, doubtless, and becoming more and more spiritual continually as he grew older. Still he was tainted with the world till a very few hours probably before his death, whereas she and Theobald had given up all for Christ's sake. They were not worldly. At least Theobald was not. She had been, but she was sure she had grown in grace since she had left off eating things strangled and blood. This was as the washing in Jordan as against Ebana and Farper, rivers of Damascus. Her boy should never touch a strangled fowl, nor a black pudding. That at any rate she could see to. He should have a coral from the neighborhood of Joppa. There were coral insects on those coasts so that the thing could easily be done with a little energy. She would write to Dr. Jones about it, et cetera, and so on for hours together day after day for years. Truly Mrs. Theobald loved her child according to her lights with an exceeding great fondness, but the dreams she had dreamed in sleep were sober realities in comparison with those she indulged in while awake. When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as I have already said, began to teach him to read. He began to whip him two days after he had begun to teach him. It was painful as he said to Christina, but it was the only thing to do and it was done. The child was puny, white, and sickly, so they sent continually for the doctor who dosed him with chamomile and James powder. All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience. They were stupid and little things and he that is stupid and little things will be stupid also in much. Presently old Mr. Pontifex died and then came the revelation of the little alteration he had made in his will simultaneously with his bequest to Ernest. It was rather hard to bear, especially as there was no way of conveying a bit of their minds to the testitor now that he could no longer hurt them. As regards the boy himself, anyone must see that the bequest would be an unmitigated misfortune to him. To leave him a small independence was perhaps the greatest injury which one could inflict upon a young man. It would cripple his energies and deaden his desire for active employment. Many a youth was led into evil courses by the knowledge that on arriving at majority he would come into a few thousands. They might surely have been trusted to have their boy's interest at heart and must be better judges of those interests than he at 21 could be expected to be. Besides if Jonadab, the son of Recheb's father, or perhaps it might be simpler under the circumstances to say Recheb at once, if Recheb then had left handsome legacies to his grandchildren. Why Jonadab might not have found those children so easy to deal with, et cetera. My dear, said Theobald, after having discussed the matter with Christina for the 20th time. My dear, the only thing to guide and console us under misfortunes of this kind is to take refuge in practical work. I will go and pay a visit to Mrs. Thompson. On those days Mrs. Thompson would be told that her sins were all washed white, et cetera. A little sooner and a little more preemptorily than on others. Chapter 22 I used to stay at Battersby for a day or two sometimes while my godson and his brother and sister were children. I hardly know why I went, for Theobald and I grew more and more apart. But one gets into groove sometimes and the supposed friendship between myself and the Pontifexes continued to exist, though it was now little more than rudimentary. My godson pleased me more than either of the other children, but he had not much of the buoyancy of childhood and was more like a puny, sallow, little old man than I liked. The young people, however, were very ready to be friendly. I remember Ernest and his brother hovered round me on the first day of one of these visits with their hands full of fading flowers, which they at length proffered me. On this I did what I supposed was expected. I inquired if there was a shop near where they could buy sweeties. They said there was, so I felt in my pockets, but only succeeded in finding two pence half-penny in small money. This I gave them and the youngsters, age four and three, toddled off alone. Air long they returned and Ernest said, we can't get sweeties for all this money. I felt rebuked, but no rebuke was intended. We can get sweeties for this, showing a penny, and for this, showing another penny, but we cannot get them for all this. And he added the half-penny to the two pence. I suppose they had wanted a two-penny cake or something like that. I was amused and left them to solve the difficulty their own way, being anxious to see what they would do. Presently Ernest said, may we give you back this, showing the half-penny, and not give you back this and this, showing the pence? I assented and they gave a sigh of relief and went on their way rejoicing. A few more presents of pence and small toys completed the conquest and they began to take me into their confidence. They told me a good deal, which I'm afraid I ought not to have listened to. They said that if Grandpa Pa had lived longer, he would most likely have been made a lord, and that then Papa would have been the honorable and reverend, but that Grandpa Pa was now in heaven singing beautiful hymns with Grandma Ma alibi to Jesus Christ, who was very fond of them. And that when Ernest was ill, his mama had told him he need not be afraid of dying, for he would go straight to heaven if he would only be sorry for having done his lessons so badly and vexed his dear papa, and if he would promise never, never to vex him anymore. And that when he got to heaven, Grandpa Pa and Grandma Ma alibi would meet him, and he would always be with them, and they would be very good to him and teach him to sing ever such beautiful hymns, more beautiful by far than those which he was now so fond of, et cetera, et cetera. But he did not wish to die, and he was glad when he got better, for there were no kittens in heaven, and he did not think there were cowslips to make cowslip tea with. Their mother was plainly disappointed in them. My children are none of them geniuses, Mr. Overton, she said to me at breakfast one morning. They have fair abilities, and thanks to Theobald's tuition, they are forward for their years, but they have nothing like genius. Genius is a thing apart from this, is it not? Of course, I said it was a thing quite apart from this, but if my thoughts had been laid bare, they would have appeared as, give me my coffee immediately, ma'am, and don't talk nonsense. I have no idea what genius is, but so far as I can form any conception about it, I should say it was a stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned to scientific and literary clackers. I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I should imagine it was something like this. My children ought to be all geniuses because they are mine and Theobald's, and it is naughty of them not to be. But of course, they cannot be so good and clever as Theobald and I were, and if they show signs of being so, it will be naughty of them. Happily, however, they are not this, and yet it is very dreadful that they are not. As for genius, hoity-toity indeed, why a genius should turn intellectual somersaults as soon as it is born, and none of my children have yet been able to get into the newspapers. I will not have children of mine give themselves heirs. It is enough for them that Theobald and I should do so. She did not know, poor woman, that true greatness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men without being suspected. If its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness will air long shrink to very ordinary dimensions. What then, it may be asked, is the good of being great? The answer is that you may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead, and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that company better when you have chosen it. Also that you may be able to give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who are yet unborn. This one would think was substantial gain enough for greatness without its wanting to ride rough shot over us, even when disguised as humility. I was there on a Sunday and observed the rigor with which the young people were taught to observe the Sabbath. They might not cut out things, nor use their paint box on a Sunday. And this they thought rather hard because their cousins, the John Pontifexes, might do these things. Their cousins might play with their toy train on Sunday, but though they had promised that they would run none but Sunday trains, all traffic had been prohibited. One treat only was allowed them. On Sunday evenings, they might choose their own hymns. In the course of the evening, they came into the drawing room and as a special treat were to sing some of their hymns to me instead of saying them so that I might hear how nicely they sang. Ernest was to choose the first hymn and he chose one about some people who were to come to the sunset tree. I am no botanist and I do not know what kind of tree a sunset tree is, but the words began, come, come, come, come to the sunset tree for the day is past and gone. The tune was rather pretty and had taken Ernest's fancy for he was unusually fond of music and had a sweet little child's voice which he liked using. He was, however, very late in being able to sound a hard C or K and instead of saying come, he said, tum, tum, tum. Ernest said Theobald from the armchair in front of the fire where he was sitting with his hands folded before him. Don't you think it would be very nice if you were to say come like other people instead of tum? I do say tum, replied Ernest, meaning that he had said come. Theobald was always in a bed temper on Sunday evening. Whether it is that they are as much bored with the day as their neighbors or whether they are tired or whatever the cause may be, clergymen or seldom at their best on Sunday evening. I had already seen signs that evening that my host was cross and was a little nervous at hearing Ernest say so promptly. I do say tum when his papa said that he did not say it as he should. Theobald noticed the fact that he was being contradicted in a moment. He got up from his armchair and went to the piano. No, Ernest, you don't, he said. You say nothing of the kind. You say tum, not come. Now say come after me as I do. Tum, said Ernest at once, is that better? I have no doubt he thought it was, but it was not. Now, Ernest, you are not taking pains. You are not trying as you ought to do. It is high time you learn to say come. Why, Joey can say come, can't you, Joey? Yes, I can, replied Joey. And he said something which was not far off, come. There, Ernest, do you hear that? There is no difficulty about it, nor shadow of difficulty. Now, take your own time, think about it, and say come after me. The boy remained silent for a few seconds and then said tum again. I laughed, but Theobald turned to me impatiently and said, please do not laugh, Overton. It will make the boy think it does not matter and it matters a great deal. Then turning to Ernest he said, now Ernest, I will give you one more chance and if you don't say come, I shall know that you are self-willed and naughty. He looked very angry and a shade came over Ernest's face like that which comes upon the face of a puppy when it is being scolded without understanding why. The child saw well what was coming now, was frightened and of course said tum once more. Very well Ernest said his father, catching him angrily by the shoulder. I have done my best to save you, but if you will have it so, you will. And he lugged the little wretch crying by anticipation out of the room. A few minutes more and we could hear screams coming from the dining room across the hall which separated the drawing room from the dining room and knew that poor Ernest was being beaten. I have sent him to bed, said Theobald as he returned to the drawing room. And now, Christina, I think we will have the servants into prayers. And he rang the bell for them, red-handed as he was. End of Chapter 22, recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 23 and 24 of the Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler, Chapter 23. The man-servant William came and set the chairs for the maids and presently they filed in. First Christina's maid, then the cook, then the housemaid, then William, and then the coachman. I sat opposite them and watched their faces as Theobald read a chapter from the Bible. They were nice people, but more absolute vacancy I never saw upon the countenances of human beings. Theobald began by reading a few verses from the Old Testament, according to some system of his own. On this occasion, the passage came from the 15th chapter of Numbers. It had no particular bearing that I could see upon anything which was going on just then, but the spirit which breathed throughout the whole seemed to me to be so like that of Theobald himself that I could understand better after hearing it how he came to think as he thought and act as he acted. The verses are as follows. But the soul that doeth ought presumptuously, whether he be born in the land or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Because he hath despised the word of the Lord and hath broken his commandments, that soul shall be utterly cut off. His iniquity shall be upon him. And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they found him gathering sticks, brought him unto Moses and Aaron and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp and stoned him with stones and he died as the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribbon of blue. And it shall be unto you for a fringe that ye may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them. And that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes. That ye may remember and do all my commandments and be holy unto your God. I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God. My thoughts wandered while Theobald was reading the above and reverted to a little matter which I had observed in the course of the afternoon. It happened that some years previously a swarm of bees had taken up their abode in the roof of the house under the slates and had multiplied so that the drawing room was a good deal frequented by these bees during the summer when the windows were open. The drawing room paper was of a pattern which consisted of bunches of red and white roses and I saw several bees at different times fly up to these bunches and try them under the impression that they were real flowers. Having tried one bunch, they tried the next and the next and the next till they reached the one that was nearest to the ceiling. Then they went down bunch by bunch as they had ascended till they were stopped by the back of the sofa. On this they ascended bunch by bunch to the ceiling again and so on and so on till I was tired of watching them. As I thought of the family prayers being repeated night and morning week by week, month by month and year by year, I could no help thinking how like it was to the way in which the bees went up the wall and down the wall. Bunch by bunch, without ever suspecting that so many of the associated ideas could be present and yet the main idea be wanting hopelessly and forever. When Theobald had finished reading, we all knelt down and the Carlo Dolci and the Sasso Ferrato looked down upon a sea of upturned backs as we buried our faces in our chairs. I noted that Theobald prayed that we might be made truly honest and conscientious in all our dealings and smiled at the introduction of the truly. Then my thoughts ran back to the bees and I reflected that after all it was perhaps as well at any rate for Theobald that our prayers were seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of response. For if I had thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard, I should have prayed that someone might air long treat him as he had treated Ernest. Then my thoughts wandered on to those calculations which people make about waste of time and how much one can get done if one gives 10 minutes a day to it. And I was thinking what improper suggestion I could make in connection with this and the time spent on family prayers which should at the same time be just tolerable. When I heard Theobald beginning the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and in a few seconds the ceremony was over and the servants filed out again as they had filed in. As soon as they had left the drawing room, Christina who was a little ashamed of the transaction to which I had been a witness imprudently returned to it and began to justify it saying that it had cut her to the heart and that it cut Theobald to the heart and a good deal more but that it was the only thing to be done. I received this as coldly as I decently could and by my silence during the rest of the evening showed that I disapproved of what I had seen. Next day I was to go back to London but before I went I said I should like to take some new laid eggs back with me. So Theobald took me to the house of a laborer in the village who lived a stone's throw from the rectory as being likely to supply me with them. Ernest for some reason or other was allowed to come too. I think the hens had begun to sit but at any rate eggs were scarce and the cottager's wife could not find me more than seven or eight which we proceeded to wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that I might take them to town safely. This operation was carried on upon the ground in front of the cottage door and while we were in the midst of it the cottager's little boy a lad much about Ernest's age trod upon one of the eggs that was wrapped up in paper and broke it. There now Jax had his mother see what you've done you've broken a nice egg and cost me a penny. Here Emma, she added calling her daughter take the child away, there's a deer. Emma came at once and walked off with the youngster taking him out of harm's way. Papa said Ernest after we had left the house. Why didn't Mrs. Heaton whip Jack when he trod on the egg? I was spiteful enough to give Theobald a grim smile which said as plainly as words could have done that I thought Ernest had hit him rather hard. Theobald colored and looked angry. I dare say he said quickly that his mother will whip him now that we are gone. I was not going to have this and I said I did not believe it. And so the matter dropped but Theobald did not forget it and my visits to Battersby were henceforth less frequent. On our return to the house we found the postman had arrived and had brought a letter appointing Theobald to a rural denary which had lately fallen vacant by the death of one of the neighboring clergy who had held the office for many years. The bishop wrote to Theobald most warmly and assured him that he valued him as among the most hardworking and devoted of his parochial clergy. Christina of course was delighted and gave me to understand that it was only an installment of the much higher dignities which were in store for Theobald when his merits were more widely known. I did not then foresee how closely my godson's life and mine were in after years to be bound up together. If I had, I should doubtless have looked upon him with different eyes and noted much to which I had paid no attention at the time. As it was I was glad to get away from him for I could do nothing for him or chose to say that I could not and the sight of so much suffering was painful to me. A man should not only have his own way as far as possible but he should only consort with things that are getting their own way so far as they are at any rate comfortable. Unless for short times under exceptional circumstances he should not even see things that have been stunted or starved much less should he eat meat that has been vexed by having been over driven or underfed or afflicted with any disease nor should he touch vegetables that have not been well grown. For all these things cross a man whatever a man comes in contact with in any way forms a cross with him which will leave him better or worse and the better things he is crossed with the more likely he is to live long and happily. All things must be crossed a little or they would cease to live but holy things such for example as Giovanni Bellini's saints have been crossed with nothing but what is good of its kind. Chapter 24. The storm which I have described in the previous chapter was a sample of those that occurred daily for many years. No matter how clear the sky it was always liable to cloud over now in one quarter, now in another and the thunder and lightning were upon the young people before they knew where they were. And then you know, said Ernest to me when I asked him not long since to give me more of his childish reminiscences for the benefit of my story. We used to learn Mrs. Barbold's hymns. They were in prose and there was one about the lion which began. Come and I will show you what is strong. The lion is strong. When he raiseth himself from his lair when he shakeeth his mane when the voice of his roaring is heard the cattle of the field fly and the beasts of the desert hide themselves for he is very terrible. I used to say this to Joey and Charlotte about my father himself when I got a little older but they were always didactic and said it was naughty of me. One great reason why clergyman's households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house. The doctor is out visiting patients half his time. The lawyer and the merchant have offices away from home but the clergyman has no official place of business which I'll ensure his being away from home for many hours together at stated times. Our great days were when my father went for a day's shopping to Kildenham. We were some miles from this place and commissions used to accumulate on my father's list till he would make a day of it and go and do the lot. As soon as his back was turned, the air felt lighter. As soon as the hall door opened to let him in again the law with its all-reaching touch knot, taste knot, handle knot was upon us again. The worst of it was that I could never trust Joey and Charlotte. They would go a good way with me and then turn back or even the whole way and then their consciences would compel them to tell Papa and Mama. They like running with their hair up to a certain point but their instinct was towards the hounds. It seemed to me, he continued, that the family is a survival of the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound animal and the compound animal is a form of life which has been found incompatible with high development. I would do with the family among mankind what nature has done with the compound animal and confine it to the lower and less progressive races. Certainly there is no inherent love for the family system on the part of nature herself. Pull the forms of life and you will find it in a ridiculously small minority. The fishes know it not and they get along quite nicely. The ants and the bees who far outnumber man sting their fathers to death as a matter of course and are given to the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of their offspring committed to their charge. Yet where shall we find communities more universally respected? Take the cuckoo again. Is there any bird which we like better? I saw he was running off from his own reminiscences and tried to bring him back to them but it was no use. What a fool he said. A man is to remember anything that happened more than a week ago unless it was pleasant or unless he wants to make some use of it. Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. A man at five and 30 should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood. He might be happier if he had been more fortunate in childhood but for ought he knows if he had something else might have happened which might have killed him long ago. If I had to be born again I would be born at Battersby of the same father and mother as before and I would not alter anything that has ever happened to me. The most amusing incident that I can remember about his childhood was that when he was about seven years old he told me he was going to have a natural child. I asked him his reasons for thinking this and he explained that papa and mama had always told him that nobody had children till they were married and as long as he had believed this of course he had had no idea of having a child till he was grown up but not long since he had been reading Mrs. Markham's History of England and had come upon the words John of Gaunt had several natural children. He had therefore asked his governess what a natural child was were not all children natural? Oh my dear she said a natural child is a child a person has before he is married. On this it seemed to follow logically that if John of Gaunt had had children before he was married he, Ernest Pontifex might have them also and he would be obliged to me if I would tell him what he had better do under the circumstances. I inquired how long ago he had made this discovery. He said about a fortnight and he did not know where to look for the child for it might come at any moment. You know he said babies come so suddenly one goes to bed one night and next morning there is a baby why it might die of cold if we are not on the lookout for it. I hope it will be a boy. And you have told your governess about this? Yes but she puts me off and does not help me. She says it will not come for many years and she hopes not then. Are you quite sure that you have not made any mistake in all this? Oh no because Mrs. Byrne you know called her a few days ago and I was sent for to be looked at and Mama held me out at arm's length and said is he Mr. Pontifex's child Mrs. Byrne or is he mine? Of course she couldn't have said this if Papa had not had some of the children himself. I did think the gentleman had all the boys and the lady all the girls but it can't be like this or else Mama would have not asked Mrs. Byrne to guess but then Mrs. Byrne said oh he is Mr. Pontifex's child of course and I didn't quite know what she meant by saying of course. It seems as though I was right in thinking that the husband has all the boys and the wife all the girls. I wish you would explain to me all about it. This I could hardly do so I changed the conversation after reassuring him as best I could. End of chapter 24, recording by Rhonda Fetterman. Chapters 25 and 26 of The Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Fetterman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 25. Three or four years after the birth of her daughter Christina had had one more child. She had never been strong since she married and she had a pre-sentiment that she should not survive this last confinement. She accordingly wrote the following letter which was to be given as she endorsed upon it to her sons when Ernest was 16 years old. It reached him on his mother's death many years later before it was the baby who died now and not Christina. It was found among papers which she had repeatedly and carefully arranged with the seal already broken. This, I am afraid, shows that Christina had read it and thought it too credible to be destroyed when the occasion that had called it forth had gone by. It is as follows. Batters B, March 15th, 1841. My two dear boys, when this is put into your hands you will try to bring to mind the mother whom you lost in your childhood and whom I fear you will almost have forgotten. You, Ernest, will remember her best for you are past five years old and the many, many times that she has taught you your prayers and hymns and sums and told you your stories and our happy Sunday evenings will not quite have passed from your mind and you, Joey, though only four will perhaps recollect some of these things. My dear, dear boys, for the sake of that mother who loved you very dearly and for the sake of your own happiness for ever and ever, attend to and try to remember and from time to time read over again the last words she can ever speak to you. When I think about leaving you all two things press heavily upon me. One, your father's sorrow for you, my darlings, after missing me a little while will soon forget your loss. The other, the everlasting welfare of my children. I know how long and deep the former will be and I know that he will look to his children to be almost his only earthly comfort. You know, for I am certain that it will have been so. How he has devoted his life to you and taught you and labored to lead you to all that is right and good. Oh, then be sure that you are his comforts. Let him find you obedient, affectionate and attentive to his wishes, upright, self-denying and diligent. Let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude and whose first duty is to study his happiness. You have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a father and a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy. Your respectability and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves but far, far beyond earthly respectability and well-doing and compared with which they are as nothing. Your eternal happiness rests with yourselves. You know your duty but snares and temptations from without beset you and the nearer you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel this. With God's help, with God's word and with humble hearts you will stand in spite of everything. But should you leave off seeking and earnest for the first and applying to the second, should you learn to trust in yourselves or to the advice and example of too many around you, you will, you must fall. Oh, let God be true in every man a liar. He says you cannot serve him and Mammon. He says that straight is the gate that leads to eternal life. Many there are who seek to widen it. They will tell you that such and such self-indulgences are but venial offenses, that this and that worldly compliance is excusable and even necessary. The thing cannot be, for in a hundred and a hundred places he tells you so. Look to your Bibles and seek there whether such counsel is true. And if not, oh, halt not between two opinions if God is the Lord, follow him. Only be strong and of good courage and he will never leave you nor forsake you. Remember there is not in the Bible one law for the rich and one for the poor, one for the educated and one for the ignorant. To all there is but one thing needful. All are to be living to God and their fellow creatures and not to themselves. All must seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, must deny themselves, be pure and chaste and charitable in the fullest and widest sense. All forgetting those things that are behind must press forward towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God. And now I will add but two things more. Be true through life to each other. Love as only brothers should do. Strengthen, warn, encourage one another and let who will be against you. Let each feel that in his brother he has a firm and faithful friend who will be so to the end. And oh, be kind and watchful over your dear sister. Without mother or sister she will doubly need her brother's love and tenderness and confidence. I am certain she will seek them and will love you and try to make you happy. Be sure then that you do not fail her and remember that were she to lose her father and remain unmarried, she would doubly need protectors. To you then I especially commend her. Oh, my three darling children, be true to each other, your father and your God. May he guide and bless you and grant that in a better and happier world I and mine may meet again. Your most affectionate mother, Christina Pontifex. From inquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that most mothers write letters like this shortly before their confinements and that 50% keep them afterwards, as Christina did. Chapter 26. The foregoing letter shows how much greater was Christina's anxiety for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her sons. One would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats by this time, but she had plenty still to sow. To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not and that thus in the event of a resurrection and day of judgment they will be most likely to be deemed worthy of a heavenly mansion. Perhaps a dim unconscious perception of this was the reason why Christina was so anxious for Theobald's earthly happiness, or was it merely due to a conviction that his eternal welfare was so much a matter of course that it only remained to secure his earthly happiness. He was to find his sons obedient, affectionate, attentive to his wishes, self-denying and diligent, a goodly string for a sooth of all the virtues most convenient to parents. He was never to have to blush for the follies of those who owned him such a debt of gratitude and whose first duty it was to study his happiness. How like maternal solicitude is this. Solicitude for the most part, lest the offspring should come to have wishes and feelings of its own, which may occasion many difficulties, fancied or real. It is this that is at the bottom of the whole mischief. But whether this last proposition is granted or no, at any rate we observe that Christina had a sufficiently keen appreciation of the duties of children towards their parents and felt the task of fulfilling them adequately to be so difficult that she was very doubtful how far Ernest and Joey would succeed in mastering it. It was plain in fact that her supposed parting glance upon them was one of suspicion. But there was no suspicion of Theobald that he should have devoted his life to his children why this was such a mere platitude as almost to go without saying. How let me ask, was it possible that a child only a little past five years old trained in such an atmosphere of prayers and hymns and sums and happy Sunday evenings to say nothing of daily repeated beatings over the said prayers and hymns, et cetera, about which our author is silent? How is it possible that a lad so trained should grow up in any healthy or vigorous development even though in her own way his mother was undoubtedly very fond of him and sometimes told him stories? Can the eye of any reader fail to detect the coming wrath of God as about to descend upon the head of him who should be nurtured under the shadow of such a letter as the foregoing? I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely in not allowing her priests to marry. Certainly it is a matter of common observation in England that the sons of clergymen are frequently unsatisfactory. The explanation is very simple, but it is so often lost sight of that I may perhaps be pardoned for giving it here. The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. Things must not be done in him, which are venial in the weekday classes. He is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. It is his raison d'etre. If his parishioners feel that he does this, they approve of him, for they look upon him as their own contribution towards what they deem a holy life. This is why the clergyman is so often called a vicar. He being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge, but his home is his castle as much as that of any other Englishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension in public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no longer necessary. His children are the most defenseless things he can reach, and it is on them in nine cases out of ten that he will relieve his mind. A clergyman again can hardly ever allow himself to look facts fairly in the face. It is his profession to support one side. It is impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiased examination of the other. We forget that every clergyman with a living or curacy is as much a paid advocate as the barrister who is trying to persuade a jury to acquit a prisoner. We should listen to him with the same suspense of judgment, the same full consideration of the arguments of the opposing council, as a judge does when he is trying a case. Unless we know these and constate them in a way that our opponents would admit to be a fair representation of their views, we have no right to claim that we have formed an opinion at all. The misfortune is that, by the law of the land, one side only can be heard. Theobald and Christina were no exceptions to the general rule. When they came to Battersby, they had every desire to fulfill the duties of their position and to devote themselves to the honor and glory of God. But it was Theobald's duty to see the honor and glory of God through the eyes of a church which had lived 300 years without finding reason to change a single one of its opinions. I should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting the wisdom of his church upon any single matter. His scent for possible mischief was tolerably keen. So was Christina's, and it is likely that if either of them detected in him or herself the first faint symptoms of a want of faith they were nipped no less preemptorily in the bud than signs of self-will in earnest were, and I should imagine more successfully. Yet Theobald considered himself and was generally considered to be, and indeed perhaps was, an exceptionally truthful person. Indeed, he was generally looked upon as an embodiment of all those virtues which make the poor respectable and the rich respected. In the course of time he and his wife became persuaded even to unconsciousness that no one could even dwell under their roof without deep cause for thankfulness. Their children, their servants, their parishioners must be fortunate, if so facto, that they were theirs. There was no road to happiness here or hereafter, but the road that they had themselves traveled. No good people who did not think as they did upon every subject and no reasonable person who had once the gratification of which would be inconvenient to them. Theobald and Christina. This is how it came to pass that the children were white and puny. They were suffering from homesickness. They were starving through being over-crammed with the wrong things. Nature came down upon them, but she did not come down on Theobald and Christina. Why should she? They were not leading a starved existence. There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin and those who are sinned against. If a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second. End of Chapter 26. Recording by Rhonda Federman. Chapter 27 and 28 of The Way of All Flesh. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rhonda Federman. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. Chapter 27. I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years. Enough that he struggled through them, and a twelve-years-old knew every page of his Latin and Greek grammars by heart. He had read the greater part of Virgil, Horace, and Livy, and I do not know how many Greek plays. He was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of French. It was now time he went to school, and to school he was accordingly to go, under the famous Dr. Skinner of Ruffborough. Theobald had known Dr. Skinner slightly at Cambridge. He had been a burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his boyhood upwards. He was a very great genius. Everyone knew this. They said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the word genius could be applied without exaggeration. Had he not taken, I don't know, how many university scholarships in his freshman year? Had he not been afterwards Senior Wrangler, First Chancellor's Medalist, and I do not know how many more things besides? And then he was such a wonderful speaker. At the Union Debating Club, he had been without arrival and had, of course, been president. His moral character, a point on which so many geniuses were weak, was absolutely irreproachable. For most of all, however, among his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even than his genius, was what biographers have called the simple-minded and child-like earnestness of his character. An earnestness which might be perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke even about trifles. It is hardly necessary to say. He was on the liberal side in politics. His personal appearance was not particularly prepossessing. He was about middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce gray eyes that flashed fire from beneath a pair of great, bushy, beatling eyebrows, and over-odd all who came near him. It was in respect of his personal appearance, however, that if he was vulnerable at all, his weak place was to be found. His hair when he was a young man was red, but after he had taken his degree, he had a brain fever which caused him to have his head shaved. When he reappeared he did so wearing a wig and one which was a good deal further off red than his own hair had been. He not only had never discarded the wig, but year after year it had edged itself a little more and a little more off red till by the time he was forty there was not a trace of red remaining and his wig was brown. When Dr. Skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five and twenty, the headmaster ship of Ruffborough Grammar School had fallen vacant, and he had been unhesitatingly appointed. The result justified the selection. Dr. Skinner's pupils distinguished themselves at whichever university they went to. He molded their minds after the model of his own and stamped an impression upon them which was indelible in afterlife. Whatever else a Ruffborough man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a God fearing earnest Christian and a liberal, if not a radical, in politics. Some boys of course were incapable of appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr. Skinner's nature. Some such boys, alas there will be in every school, upon them Dr. Skinner's hand was very properly a heavy one. His hand was against them and theirs against him during the whole time of the connection between them. They not only disliked him, but they hated all that he more especially embodied, and throughout their lives disliked all that reminded them of him. Such boys however were in a minority, the spirit of the place being decidedly Skinnerian. I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great man. It was during the Christmas holidays and I had come down to Ruffborough for a few days to see Alothea Pontifex, who was then living there, on business. It was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if I was a light of literature at all, it was of the very lightest kind. It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a good deal, the works had been almost exclusively for the stage and for those theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and burlesque. I had written many pieces of this description full of puns and comic songs and they had had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment of English history during the Reformation period, in the course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas Moore, Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and Thomas Cromwell and his youth better known as the Malleus Monachorum and had made them dance a breakdown. I had also dramatized the pilgrim's progress for a Christmas pantomime and made an important scene of Vanity Fair with Mr. Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy and Hopeful as the principal characters. The orchestra played music taken from Handel's best-known works, but the time was a good deal altered and altogether the tunes were not exactly as Handel left them. Mr. Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose. He wore a capacious waistcoat and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give him. He wore the costume of a young swell of the period and had a cigar in his mouth which was continually going out. Christiana did not wear much of anything. Indeed it was said that the dress which the stage manager had originally proposed for her had been considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain. But this is not the case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing chess, which I hate, with the great Dr. Skinner of Ruffborough, the historian of Athens and editor of Demosthenes. Dr. Skinner moreover was one of those people who pride themselves on being able to set people at their ease at once and I had been sitting on the edge of my chair all the evening but I have always been very easily overawed by a schoolmaster. The game had been a long one and at half-past nine when supper came in we had each of us a few pieces remaining. What will you take for supper, Dr. Skinner? said Mrs. Skinner in a silvery voice. He made no answer for some time but at last in a tone of almost superhuman solemnity he said first, Nothing and then nothing whatever. By and by however I had a sense come over me as though I were nearer the consummation of all things than I had ever yet been. The room seemed to grow dark as an expression came over Dr. Skinner's face which showed that he was about to speak. The expression gathered force, the room grew darker and darker. Stay! he at length added and I felt that here at any rate was an end to a suspense which was rapidly becoming unbearable. Stay! I may presently take a glass of cold water and a small piece of bread and butter. As he said the word butter his voice sank to a hardly audible whisper. Then there was a sigh as though of relief when the sentence was concluded as the universe this time was safe. Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game. The doctor rose briskly from his seat and placed himself at the supper table. Mrs. Skinner, he exclaimed jauntily, what are those mysterious looking objects surrounded by potatoes? Those are Oysters, Dr. Skinner. Give me some and give Overton some. And so on till he had eaten a good plate of Oysters, a scallop shell of minced veal nicely browned, some apple tart and a hunk of bread and cheese. This was the small piece of bread and butter. The cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons in them, a lemon or two and a jug of boiling water were placed upon the table. Then the great man unbent, his face beamed. And what shall it be to drink? he exclaimed persuasively. Shall it be brandy and water? No, it shall be gin and water. Gin is the more wholesome liquor. So gin it was, hot and stiff, too. Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him? Was he not headmaster of Ruffborough's school? To whom had he owed money at any time? Whose ox had he taken? Whose ass had he taken? Or whom had he defrauded? What whisper had ever been breathed against his moral character? If he had become rich, it was by the most honorable of all means, his literary attainments, over and above his great works of scholarship, his meditations upon the epistle and character of St. Jude had placed him among the most popular of English theologians. It was so exhaustive that no one who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject again. Indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with it. He had made five thousand pounds by this work alone and would be very likely to make another five thousand pounds before he died. A man who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and circumstance, nor should his words be taken without searching for what he used to call a deeper and more hidden meaning. Those who searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be without reward. They would find that bread and butter was skinneries for oyster patties and apple tart, and gin hot, the true translation of water. But independently of their money value his works had made him a lasting name in literature. So probably Gallio was under the impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather from Seneca that he compiled and which for ought we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution. But the treatises are all gone and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that he expected, the last reason that would have flattered his vanity. He has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement with which he was ever brought into connection. I wish people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not make so much noise about important movements. And so, if Dr. Skinner becomes immortal it will probably be for some reason very different from the one which he so fondly imagined. Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this that in reality he was making his money by corrupting youth? That it was his paid profession to make the worse appear the better reason in the eyes of those who were too young and inexperienced to be able to find him out? That he kept out of the sight of those whom he professed to teach material points of the argument for the production of which they had a right to rely upon the honor of anyone who made professions of sincerity? That he was a passionate half-turkey cock, half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face and hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid but who would take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly? That his meditations on St. Jude such as they were were cribbed without acknowledgment? And would have been beneath contempt if so many people did not believe them to have been written honestly? Mrs. Skinner might have perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had thought it worth while to try but she had enough to attend to in looking after her household and seeing that the boys were well fed and if they were ill properly looked after which she took great care that they were. CHAPTER XXVIII Ernest had heard awful accounts of Dr. Skinner's temper and of the bullying which the younger boys at Ruffborough had to put up with at the hands of the bigger ones. He had now got about as much as he could stand and felt as though it must go hard with him if his burdens of whatever kind were to be increased. He did not cry on leaving home but I am afraid he did on being told that he was getting near Ruffborough. His father and mother were with him having posted from home in their own carriage. Ruffborough had as yet no railway and as it was only some forty miles from Battersby this was the easiest way of getting there. On seeing him cry his mother felt flattered and caressed him. She said she knew he must feel very sad at leaving such a happy home and going among people who, though they would be very good to him could never, never be as good as his dear papa and she had been. Still she was herself, if he only knew it much more deserving of pity than he was for the parting was more painful to her than it could possibly be to him, etc. And Ernest on being told that his tears were for grief at leaving home took it all on trust and did not trouble to investigate the real cause of his tears. As they approached Ruffborough he pulled himself together and was fairly calm by the time he reached Dr. Skinners. On their arrival they had luncheon with the doctor and his wife and then Mrs. Skinner took Christina over the bedrooms and showed her where her dear little boy was to sleep. Whatever men may think about the study of man women do really believe the noblest study for womankind to be woman and Christina was too much engrossed with Mrs. Skinner to pay much attention to anything else. I dare say Mrs. Skinner too was taking pretty accurate stock of Christina. Christina was charmed as indeed she generally was with any new acquaintance for she found in them and so must we all something of a nature of a cross. As for Mrs. Skinner I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to find much regeneration in the sample before her now. I believe her private opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known headmaster who declared that all parents were fools but more especially mothers. She was however all smiles and sweetness and Christina devoured those graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself as such as no other mother would have been at all likely to have won. In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr. Skinner in his library the room where new boys were examined and the old ones had up for rebuke or chastisement. If the walls of that room could speak what an amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not bear witness to. Like all houses Dr. Skinner's had its peculiar smell. In this case the prevailing odor was one of Russian leather but along with it there was a subordinate saver as of a chemist shop. This came from a small laboratory in one corner of the room the possession of which together with the free chattery and smattery use such words as carbonate, hyposulfate phosphate and affinity were enough to convince even the most skeptical that Dr. Skinner had a profound knowledge of chemistry. I may say in passing that Dr. Skinner had dabbled in a great many other things as well as chemistry. He was a man of many small knowledges and each of them dangerous. I remember Aletheia Pontifex once said in her wicked way to me that Dr. Skinner put her in the mind of the bourbon princes on their return from exile after the battle of Waterloo only that he was their exact converse for whereas they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing Dr. Skinner had learned everything and forgotten everything and this puts me in mind of another of her wicked sayings about Dr. Skinner. She told me one day that he had the harmlessness of the serpent and the wisdom of the dove but to return to Dr. Skinner's library. Over the chimney piece there was a Bishop's half-length portrait of Dr. Skinner himself painted by the elder Pickersgill whose merit Dr. Skinner had been among the first to discern and foster. There were no other pictures in the library but in the dining room there was a fine collection which the doctor had got together with his usual consummate taste. He added to it largely in later life and when it came to the hammered Christie's as it did not long since it was found to comprise many of the latest and most matured works of Solomon Hart, O'Neill, Charles Landseer and more of our recent academicians an icon at the moment remember. There were thus brought together and exhibited at one view many works which had attracted attention at the academy exhibitions as to whose ultimate destiny there had been some curiosity. The prices realized were disappointing to the executors but then these things are so much a matter of chance. An unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the collection down. Moreover there had been one or two large sales a short time before Dr. Skinner's so that at this last there was rather a panic and a reaction against the high prices that had ruled lately. The table of the library was loaded with books many deep. Manuscripts of all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them. Boys' exercises probably and examination papers but all littering untitly about. The room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered it stumbled over a large hole in the turkey carpet and the dust that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and beaten. This I should say was no fault of Mrs. Skinner's but was due to the doctor himself who declared that if his papers were once disturbed it would be the death of him. Near the window was a green cage containing a pair of turtledoves whose plaintive cooing added to the melancholy of the place. The walls were covered with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and on every shelf the book stood in double rows. It was horrible. Prominent among the most prominent upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound volumes entitled Skinner's Works. Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions and Ernest believed that Dr. Skinner knew all the books in this terrible library and that he, if he were to be any good should have to learn them too. His heart fainted within him. He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so while Dr. Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the day. He talked about the hand and controversy then raging and discourse learnedly about permunery. Then he talked about the revolution which had just broken out in Sicily and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to allow foreign troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush it. Dr. Skinner and the other masters took in the times among them and Dr. Skinner echoed the times' leaders. In those days there were no penny papers and Theobald only took in the spectator for he was at that time on the wig side in politics. Besides this he used to receive the ecclesiastical gazette once a month but he saw no other papers and was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr. Skinner ran from subject to subject. The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian Revolution literally led the doctor to the reforms which his holiness had introduced into his dominions and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not long since appeared in punch to the effect that Pio no-no should rather have been named Pio yes-yes because, as the doctor explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything like a pun went straight to Dr. Skinner's heart. And then he went on to the matter of these reforms themselves. They opened up a new era in the history of Christendom and would have such momentous and far-reaching consequences that they might even lead to a reconciliation between the churches of England and Rome. Dr. Skinner had lately published a pamphlet upon this subject which had shown great learning and had attacked the church of Rome in a way which did not promise much hope of reconciliation. He had grounded his attack upon the letters A-M-D-G which he had seen outside a Roman Catholic chapel and which, of course, stood for admariam de genitrisum. Could anything be more idolatrous? I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory play me one of the tricks it often does play me when I said the doctor proposed admariam de genitrisum as the full harmonies, so to speak which should be constructed upon the base A-M-D-G for that is bad Latin and that the doctor really harmonized the letters thus Ave Maria de genitrix. No doubt the doctor did what was right in the matter of latinity. I have forgotten the little Latin I ever knew and I am not going to look the matter up but I believe the doctor said admariam de genitrisum and if so, we may be sure that admariam de genitrisum is good enough Latin at any rate for ecclesiastical purposes. The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared and doctor Skinner was jubilant but when the answer appeared and it was solemnly declared that A-M-D-G stood for nothing more dangerous than admariam de iglorium it was felt that though this subterfuge did not succeed with any intelligent Englishman still it was a pity doctor Skinner had selected this particular point for his attack for he had to leave his enemy in possession of the field when people are left in possession of the field spectators have an awkward habit of thinking that their adversary does not dare to come to the scratch. Doctor Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pamphlet and I doubt whether this gentleman he was bored for in his heart he hated liberalism though he was ashamed to say so and as I have said profess to be on the wig side he did not want to be reconciled to the church of Rome he wanted to make all Roman Catholics turn Protestants and could never understand why they would not do so but the doctor talked in such a truly liberal spirit and shut him up so sharply when he tried to edge in a word or two that he had to let him have it all his own way and this was not what he was accustomed to he was wondering how he could bring it to an end when a diversion was created by the discovery that Ernest had begun to cry doubtless through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom greater than he could bear he was evidently in a highly nervous state and a good deal upset by the excitement of the morning Mrs. Skinner therefore who came in with Christina at this juncture proposed that he should spend the afternoon with Mrs. J the matron and not be introduced to his young companions until the following morning his father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell and the lad was handed over to Mrs. J Oh school masters if any of you read this book bear in mind when any particularly timid, driveling urchin is brought by his papa into your study and you treat him with the contempt which he deserves and afterwards make his life a burden to him for years bear in mind that it is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your future chronicler will appear never see a wretched little heavy-eyed might sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall without saying to yourself perhaps this boy is he who if I am not careful will one day tell the world what manner of man I was if even two or three school masters learn this lesson and remember it the preceding chapters will not have been written in vain end of chapter 28 recording by Rhonda Fetterman