"Tsut, tsut, tsut, tsut!—deary me!—poor fellow!—tsut, tsut, tsut!" responds that individual, starting up.
Now, what on earth do you do that for, Brown? Come, roundly, your reason, sir? Do pray tell me why you produced the series of peculiar sounds represented by "tsut, tsut," &c. You are a stout man, and a sober man,—why, in the name of all that's unaccountable, did you utter them? But the fact is, you are not alone, Brown, in your inability to solve this difficult question. For I never yet encountered the man who could satisfactorily explain to me how or why those sounds have come to be admitted into general society, as heralds or harbingers of a condoling and sympathising speech, or indicative, without further remark, of inward and heartfelt commiseration for suffering humanity in the breast of him who utters them. Philosophers, just explain this!
"Let us go and hear Miffler preach this morning," said a friend to me the other morning, in the country: "his congregation is composed entirely of the poorest, and, I should think, the most ignorant portion of our agricultural population. But they say that he manages to preach so plainly, that every one can understand and follow him."
So off we set, and a pleasant walk across the fields brought us to Elmsleigh church—one of those exceedingly picturesque old places, with a funny wooden steeple, or spire, if it can be called so, rising from the still more ancient square tower. We found Mr. Miffler in the reading-desk already, and, by his scarlet hood, knew him an Oxonian (we subsequently found he had been a first-class man). After reading the prayers exceedingly well, he ascended to the pulpit, and commenced his sermon. Now, supposing his congregation to have consisted of men of my friend's mental calibre, it was an exceedingly good and intelligible sermon; but to the majority of those present it was about as intelligible as High Dutch would have been, or Hebrew without the points. I could not help glancing at a countryman in his smockfrock and leggins, whose countenance forcibly recalled to my mind one of those grotesque satyrs occasionally seen carved on old chimney-pieces; and wondering as I gazed at him what train of thought the words which Miffler had just uttered—"the noxious dogmas exhibited in certain patiestic commentators, subsequent to the Nicene council"—had conjured up in his mind! Then again Miffler gravely informed his hearers that ambition was a deadly sin, warning them against it. Ambition!—to a clodhopper whose only aspiration after greatness is to get Farmer Jeffreys to keep him on at work through the winter!
Miffler, what do you do that for? But you, again, do not stand alone. Are there not many, many Mifflers guilty of the same absurdity, and equally unable with your reverend self to give any satisfactory reason for so doing, except that their predecessors have done it before them? Oh, ye hebdomadal boards, caputs, and convocations, explain all this!
"Yes, I assure you, Johnson, you never saw or heard of such a perfect fool in all your life. He literally thinks I am going to support him in idleness, and he doing nothing."
"No!"
"Yes! And, would you believe it, he called on poor Thompson, and tried to persuade him that I had behaved so shabbily to him that he really shall be obliged to cut me!"