It
may be your fate to sink or to swim, but it can never be
your degradation to strike. Die on the last plank and be
damned to you, or come into port with your ensign flying
mast-high."
Was it not fine? It stirred my blood, and the words
rang like a bugle call in my head. It braced me, and the
time was coming when all the bracing I could get would
not be too much. I copied it out, and pinned it on one
side of my mantel-piece. On the other I stuck up a chip
from Carlyle, which I daresay is as familiar to you
as to me. "One way or another all the light, energy, and
available virtue which we have does come out of us, and
goes very infallibly into God's treasury, living and
working through eternities there. We are not lost--not
a single atom of us--of one of us." Now, there is a
religious sentence which is intellectually satisfying,
and therefore morally sound.
This last quotation leads to my second visitor. Such
a row we had! I make a mistake in telling you about it,
for I know your sympathies will be against me; but at
least it will have the good effect of making you boil
over into a letter of remonstrance and argument than
which nothing could please me better.
Well, the second person whom I admitted through my
door was the High Church curate of the parish--at least,
I deduced High Church from his collar and the cross which
dangled from his watch chain. He seemed to be a fine
upstanding manly fellow--in fact, I am bound in honesty
to admit that I have never met the washy tea-party curate
outside the pages of Punch.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227