“That is my name,” said the clergyman, smiling pleasantly. “Anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, a great deal, if you will let me talk to you about a few of your parishioners.”
“My parishioners! I beg your pardon, but you are quite a stranger to me, and, I should think, to the parish.”
“To the parish,—no, I am quite at home in it; and I honestly believe that it has never known a more officious busybody, thrusting himself into its most private affairs.”
Mr. Lethbridge stared, and, after a short pause, said, “I have heard of a young man who has been staying at Mr. Saunderson’s, and is indeed at this moment the talk of the village. You are—”
“That young man. Alas! yes.”
“Nay,” said Mr. Lethbridge, kindly, “I cannot myself, as a minister of the Gospel, approve of your profession, and, if I might take the liberty, I would try and dissuade you from it; but still, as for the one act of freeing a poor girl from the most scandalous persecution, and administering, though in a rough way, a lesson to a savage brute who has long been the disgrace and terror of the neighbourhood, I cannot honestly say that it has my condemnation. The moral sense of a community is generally a right one: you have won the praise of the village. Under all the circumstances, I do not withhold mine. You woke this morning and found yourself famous. Do not sigh ‘Alas.’”
“Lord Byron woke one morning and found himself famous, and the result was that he sighed ‘Alas’ for the rest of his life. If there be two things which a wise man should avoid, they are fame and love. Heaven defend me from both!”
Again the parson stared; but being of compassionate nature, and inclined to take mild views of everything that belongs to humanity, he said, with a slight inclination of his head,—
“I have always heard that the Americans in general enjoy the advantage of a better education than we do in England, and their reading public is infinitely larger than ours; still, when I hear one of a calling not highly considered in this country for intellectual cultivation or ethical philosophy cite Lord Byron, and utter a sentiment at variance with the impetuosity of inexperienced youth, but which has much to commend it in the eyes of a reflective Christian impressed with the nothingness of the objects mostly coveted by the human heart, I am surprised, and—oh, my dear young friend, surely your education might fit you for something better!”