“Go to church with aunty enough to keep the peace,” said he to Fanny. “You and I will not quarrel about it as long as it tends to aunty’s comfort.”
“I would not like you to quarrel with me if I went for my own comfort,” said Fanny.
This touch of his own independence pleased him, and he said, “Go along, you gipsy—thistles and lilies never quarrel.”
“Red-haired girls are never lilies, though cross cousins are very sharp thistles,” said Fanny, who, a year ago, would as soon have indulged in repartee with her cousin as the lily he likened her to.
“You have grown very bold, if not very handsome,” he replied—and Fanny went to church with her aunt. She was never disturbed there, however much good Mrs. Evans prayed for such result. Some of her prayers had been answered. She had prayed for many years that all the theatres might be converted into chapels, and at last one of them was, and she had the pleasure of hearing the divine Mr. Kirchard preach in it, from Sunday to Sunday, and various week days and evenings beside. He was an earnest preacher, and it was surprising the quantities of green tea, cayenne and cavendish that he converted into gospel. The ladies of his church presented the pulpit with an elegant cushion and spittoon, and never mortal minister had more use for both than the Rev. Mr. Kirchard. The way he beat the cushion and filled the other article, when he alarmed the sinners, was plentiful.
But Fanny was never disturbed with the powerful preaching of the reverend gentleman. Like a man who tends a saw-mill half the time, and sleeps soundly when relieved by his companion who tends it the other half, so Fanny was always very peaceful in church, if she was not sleepy. I believe she had a conscience against sleeping, though what she kept awake for, perhaps she was not herself aware. But it was very exemplary of her, and very gratifying to good Mrs. Evans.
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CHAPTER IV.
There are some good people who deny the doctrine of total depravity, who don’t see how it is possible for a man deliberately to be a hypocrite. They say that a man can’t live unless he has some good in him. I shall not dispute with these worthy people, because, in a free country, every man has a right to his own opinion, provided he does not happen to think that he may buy tickets in lotteries out of Wall street, and appropriate his neighbor’s goods without the formalities made and provided in the righteous common law of our social code; but I must say that if goodness is necessary to keep people alive, some folks have the gift of living on “small means;” and it becomes my duty to introduce a young gentleman eminently gifted in this particular.
Sylvester Wilson was a young man who had a laudable wish for his own advancement, but, unfortunately for his piety, he was entirely indifferent to the means that contributed to his getting ahead, provided the world made no complaint of him. The opinion of those about him, with two-thirds the facts concealed from them, was a moral law for him, and he had no other. His father was a bad, ambitious and unscrupulous man, and the hereditary transmission of qualities would have charmed Fowler, though the qualities proved that he was “bad, born bad, and had no business here” but to make mischief. He was, however, an excellent dissembler, and passed for a pious and exemplary young man, punctual at church, and designed for the ministry. His family were friends of the Evans family.