She gives a side glance, and looks down;
Beware! beware!
Trust her not; she is fooling thee."
So the days went on. The stream of visitors usual in a country house during the hunting season flowed in and out of Kerton Manor without any remarkable specimen showing itself above the surface. One individual, perhaps, I ought to except, the curate of the parish, who was a very constant visitor.
His appearance was not fascinating: he had a long, narrow head, thatched with straight, scanty hair; little, protruding eyes, and a complexion of a bright unvarying red—in fact, he was very like a prawn.
It was soon evident that the Rev. Samuel Foster was helplessly smitten by Miss Raymond, or, as Forrester elegantly expressed it, "hard hit in the wings, and crippled for flying!" Helplessly, I say, but not hopelessly; for that wicked little creature, acting perhaps under private orders, gave him all sorts of treacherous encouragement. I never saw any human being evolve so much caloric under excitement as he did, except one young woman whom I met ages ago—(a most estimable person; her Sunday-school was a model)—whose only way of evincing any emotion, either of anger, fear, pain, or pleasure, was—a profuse perspiration. Mr. Foster not only got awfully hot, but electrical into the bargain. His thin hairs used to stand out distinctly and in relief from his head and face, just like a person on the glass tripod. Charley suggested insulating him unawares, and getting a flash out of his knuckles, if not out of his brain. In truth, it was piteous to see the struggle between passion and nervousness that raged perpetually within him. He would stand for some time casting lamb's-eyes at the object of his affections—to the amorous audacity of the full-grown sheep he never soared—then suddenly, without the slightest provocation, he would discharge at her a compliment, elaborate, long-winded, Grandisonian, as a raw recruit fires his musket, shutting his eyes, and incontinently take to flight, without waiting to see the effect of his shot. If he had spent half the time and pains on his sermons that he did on his small-talk (I believe he used to write out three or four foul copies of each sentence previously at home), what a boon it would have been to his unlucky audience on Sundays!
Why is it that the great proportion of our pastors seem to conspire together with one consent to make the periodical duty of listening to them as hard as possible? Can they imagine there is profit or pleasure in a discourse wandering wearily round in a circle, or dragging a slow length along of truisms and trivialities? In the best of congregations there can be but few alchemists; and, without that science, who is to extract the essence of Truth from the moles incongesta of crass moralities?
To persuade or dissuade you must interest the head or the heart. I admire those who can do either successfully, but I do protest against those clerical tyrants who shelter themselves behind their license to fire at us their ruthless platitudes. If such could only struggle against that strong temptation of our fallen nature—the delight of hearing one's own sweet voice—so as to concentrate now and then! The best orators, spiritual and mundane, have been brief sometimes.
I am no theologian, but I take leave to doubt if, in the elaborate divinity of fourteen epistles, the apostle of the Gentiles ever went so straight to his hearer's heart as in that farewell charge, when the elders of Ephesus gathered round him on the sea-sand, "Sorrowing most of all for the words that he spake, that they should see his face no more."
Do you remember Canning and the clergyman? When the latter asked him, "How did you like my sermon? I endeavored not to be tedious;" I always fancy the statesman's weary, wistful look, which would have been compassionate but for a sense of personal injury, as he answered, in his mild voice, "And yet—you were."