"It may offer itself by other means to the sense, as by way of steam, which I think it doth in this place, huh! huh!—yes, it doth. And it were a sin of obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to resist the titillation of the famelic sense which is smell. Therefore be bold, follow the scent; enter the tents of the unclean for this once, and satisfy your wife's frailty. Let your frail wife be satisfied; your zealous mother and my suffering self will be satisfied also."
Zeal of the Land Busy was like a certain English statesman of whom it was said, "His conscience, instead of being his monitor, became his accomplice."
One characteristic of these unlicensed exhorters seems to be very persistent,—their almost superhuman fluency. Despising preparation and trusting to the inspiration of the moment, they are never left without words. Preaching without notes is not particularly difficult if one has something to say, but these exhorters attempt to preach without notes and also without ideas. They require nothing but a word to begin with. The speaker is like an army which, having broken away from its base of supplies, lives on the country through which it is marching. The hortatory guerrilla gets forage enough in one sentence to carry him on through the next. This was the homiletical method which Zeal of the Land used in his discourse at the fair. At a venture he cries out,—
"Down with Dagon!"
Leather-Head, the hobby-horse seller, asks very imprudently,—
"What do you mean, sir!"
That was enough; a torrent of impromptu eloquence is let loose.
"I will remove Dagon there, I say; that idol, that heathenish idol, that remains as I may say a beam, a very beam, not a beam of the sun, nor a beam of the moon, nor a beam of the balance, neither a house beam, nor a weaver's beam, but a beam in the eye, an exceeding great beam!"
It was the same method employed long after by Mr. Chadband in his moving address to little Joe.
"My young friend, you are to us a pearl, a diamond, you are to us a jewel. And why, my young friend?"