A good woman described the way in which her minister, a young man fresh from the theological school, made one of his first parish calls. He found his parishioner, who had been extolled as one of the pillars of the church, in a state of intoxication, and he was chased out of the house and some distance down the street.
“We were sorry it happened, for it gave him an unpleasant impression of the congregation. You know Mr. —— met with several rebuffs.”
The unconventional episode was related with all the prim propriety of “Cranford.”
The perfect democracy of a mining camp develops a certain naïve truth-telling, which has all the unexpectedness which belongs to the observations of a boy. There is no attempt to reduce everything to uniformity, or to prove any particular thesis. The gossip of a conventional village where people know each other too well is apt to be malicious. A creditable action is narrated, and then comes the inevitable “but.” The subject of conversation falls in the estimation of the hearers with a sudden thud.
The Honest Miner does not attempt to pass final judgment or to arrange his fellow men according to any sort of classification. He speaks of them as he sees them, and so virtues and failings jostle one another and take no offense. The result is a moral inconsequence which has all the effect of studied wit. This is what delights us in the characterization of Thompson of Angel’s:
Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger.
As we read the line we smile, not so much at Thompson as at the society of which he was a part. We see behind him the sympathetic company at Angel’s. Here was a public with whose temper he was familiar. He could trust himself to the judgment of his peers. No misdemeanor would blind them to such virtues as he actually possessed. He could appeal to them with perfect confidence.
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.