"Yes," said Mr. Stackpole, putting his hands in his pockets, "it is the particular enjoyment of some of them, I believe, to do their best to make other people miserable."
Mr. Thorn said nothing, being warned by the impatient little hammering of Fleda's worsted needle upon the marble, while her eye was no longer considering her work, and her face rested anxiously upon her hand.
"There wasn't a thing," the lady went on, "in anything he said; in his prayer or his speech, there wasn't a single cheering or elevating consideration all he talked and prayed for was, that the people there might be filled with a sense of their wickedness "
"It's their trade, Ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole "it's their trade! I wonder if it ever occurs to them to include themselves in that petition."
"There wasn't the slightest effort made, in anything he said, or prayed for and one would have thought that would have been so natural; there was not the least endeavour to do away with that superstitious fear of death which is so common and one would think it was the very occasion to do it; he never once asked that we might be led to look upon it rationally and calmly. It's so unreasonable, Mr. Stackpole it is so dissonant with our views of a benevolent Supreme Being as if it could be according to his will that his creatures should live lives of tormenting themselves it so shows a want of trust in his goodness."
"It's a relic of barbarism, Ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole it's a popular delusion, and it is like to be, till you can get men to embrace wider and more liberal views of things."
"What do you suppose it proceeds from?" said Mr. Carleton, as if the question had just occurred to him.
"I suppose from false notions received from education, Sir."
"Hardly," said Mr. Carleton; "it is too universal. You find it everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but shifting the question back one generation."
"It is a root of barbarous ages," said Mr. Stackpole "a piece of superstition handed down from father to son a set of false ideas which men are bred up and almost born with, and that they can hardly get rid of."