“Scurvy conduct,” muttered another of the committee, as he was retiring after the speaker.
“Shabby, sniveling, drivelling conduct,” muttered a third.
“Low, mean, sneaking conduct,” said a fourth.
“Dirty subterfuge,” exclaimed a fifth. And off the gentlemen went.
But they had not yet done with me. One of the number was a person with whom I had some acquaintance, and the next day I received from him the following note:—“Sir, your unmanly (I will not mince the matter with you), your unmanly and disingenuous conduct yesterday, when called upon by Mr. Triterite’s committee, has so disgusted me that I beg you to understand that we are friends no longer. A candid and open avowal of opposite sentiments from those which I entertain, I trust, I shall be always liberal enough to tolerate in any one, without prejudice to previous intimacy; but I cannot remain on terms of friendship with a man who has the meanness to seek to conciliate the party he opposes, by concealing his adherence to that which he has espoused.—I am, sir,” &c.
Well, my friends (said the melancholy gentleman), was not this an extremely hard case? To be thus abused, and reviled, and scouted, for merely desiring to be allowed to live in peace, and to have nothing to do with a squabble in which I did not feel in any way interested. But this was not all. I was lampooned, caricatured, and paragraphed in the newspapers, in a thousand different ways. In the first, I was satirized as the fair dealer; in the second, I was represented as a wolf in sheep’s clothing; and in the last, I was hinted at as “a certain quiet double-faced gentleman, not a hundred miles from hence.”
But still this was not all. Two or three days after I had been waited on by the Triteriteites, the same honour was done me by the Whiteites, and with similar views. To the gentlemen of this party, I said precisely what I had said to those of the opposite faction, and begged of them, in heaven’s name, to let me alone, and settle the matter amongst them as they best could.
“Well,” replied one of the gentlemen, when I had done, “I must say, I did not expect this of you, Mr. B. I thought I could have reckoned on your support; but it doesn’t signify. We can secure Mr. White’s appointment without you. But I must say, if you had been the candid man I took you for, you would have told me, ere this, that you meant to have supported the other party. I really cannot think very highly, Mr. B., of your conduct in this matter; but it doesn’t signify, sir—it doesn’t signify. We now know who are our friends and who are not. Mr. Triterite, you may depend upon it, will never get the church, even though he has you to support him.” Saying this, he turned on his heel and left me, followed by his train, who, precisely as the others had done, muttered as they went, “shabby fellow,” “mean scamp,” “shuffling conduct,” “snake in the grass” (favourite phrase this), &c. &c.
Well, my friends, here you see (said the melancholy gentleman), without giving any one the smallest offence, and desiring nothing so much as peace and the good will of my neighbours—here was I, I say, become obnoxious to heaven knows how many people; for my reputation naturally extended from the committees to the other members of the congregation, and from them again to their friends and acquaintances; so that I had, in the end, a pretty formidable array of enemies. The consequence of this affair was, that I soon found myself compelled, from the petty persecutions and annoyances of all sorts, to which I was subsequently exposed, to leave the congregation altogether. However, to compensate for all these troubles and vexations, I had the good fortune, about this time, to become acquainted with a very amiable young lady, as peaceably inclined and as great a lover of quiet as myself. This lady I married, having previously secured a house in one of the quietest and most retired places in the town, so as to be out of the way of all noise and din. Immediately beneath this house, however, there was an empty unlet shop, which I could not help regarding with a suspicious eye, from an apprehension that it might be taken by a person of some noisy calling or other; and so much at last did this fear alarm me, that I determined on taking the shop into my own hands, and running myself the risk of its letting—thus securing the choice of a tenant. Having come to this resolution, then, I called upon the landlord and inquired the rent.
“O sir,” said he, “the shop is let.”