“Speak it the rather for that,” quoth Sir Thomas.
Then did William give utterance to the words of the preacher, not indeed in his sermon at St. Mary’s, but after dinner.
“‘Lust seizeth us in youth, ambition in midlife, avarice in old age; but vanity and pride are the besetting sins that drive the angels from our cradle, pamper us with luscious and most unwholesome food, ride our first stick with us, mount our first horse with us, wake with us in the morning, dream with us in the night, and never at any time abandon us. In this world, beginning with pride and vanity, we are delivered over from tormentor to tormentor, until the worst tormentor of all taketh absolute possession of us for ever, seizing us at the mouth of the grave, enchaining us in his own dark dungeon, standing at the door, and laughing at our cries. But the Lord, out of his infinite mercy, hath placed in the hand of every man the helm to steer his course by, pointing it out with his finger, and giving him strength as well as knowledge to pursue it.
“‘William! William! there is in the moral straits a current from right to wrong, but no re-flux from wrong to right; for which destination we must hoist our sails aloft and ply our oars incessantly, or night and the tempest will overtake us, and we shall shriek out in vain from the billows, and irrecoverably sink.’”
“Amen!” cried Sir Thomas most devoutly, sustaining his voice long and loud.
“Open that casement, good Silas! the day is sultry for the season of the year; it approacheth unto noontide. The room is close, and those blue flies do make a strange hubbub.”
William Shakspeare.
“In troth do they, sir; they come from the kitchen, and do savour woundily of roast goose! And, methinks—”
Sir Thomas.
“What bethinkest thou?”