Part 5 (2/2)
It is a shame, Mr. Webster, that you, a man who pretends to members.h.i.+p in a Christian Church, should be guilty of believing malicious reports respecting a Christian minister, and more particularly that you should spread them abroad in the very neighbourhood where he labours. This is a conduct far beneath a man of honour, of charity, and self-respect.”
”Are you intending this lecture for me, Mr. Watson?” asked Webster, rather petulantly.
”I am, sir: and you deserve it, in much stronger language than I can use. You have been the means of blackening Mr. Good's character in this place, when it was all clean and unimpeachable. You have been the means of weakening his influence in the pulpit, and out of the pulpit. You have injured him, injured his wife and family; and the good man, through you, has been obliged to give in his resignation as our pastor.”
”Through me, do you say, Mr. Watson?”
”Yes, sir, through you.”
”How can that be?”
”It was you who brought the scandal into the neighbourhood: who told it to Newsman and Reporter and everybody you met with, until your scandal grew as mushrooms in every family of the congregation. It became the talk of all. Many kept from church. They suspected Mr. Good: more than this, they accused him in their conversation of many things inconsistent with a minister; and how could they receive benefit from his preaching, even if they went to hear him? Yes, sir, you have been the cause of the 'fine times,' as you call them, in our Church, and not Mr. Good.”
”I am sorry for it.”
”Well, sir, if you are sorry for it, repent of it; forsake the evil of your doing. Give up the itching you have for scandal. Do not repeat things upon mere rumour; you have done more injury in this one case than you will do good if you live to be a hundred years old. Remember, Mr.
Webster, what the Wise Man says, ”He that uttereth slander is a fool.”
Mr. Webster shrunk away from Mr. Watson as one condemned in his own conscience. He evidently felt the keen remarks thus made; and I hope he became a reformed man in this regard, during his future life.
VI.
_THE PLEONAST._
”This barren verbiage current among men.”--TENNYSON.
The habit of this talker is to enc.u.mber his ideas with such a plethora of words as frequently prove fatal to their sense. Some of this cla.s.s employ fine words because they are fine, with perfect indifference to the signification: others do it from ”that fastidiousness,” as one says, ”which makes some men walk on the highroad as if the whole business of their life was to keep their boots clean.”
Mr. Hill was a man very much accustomed to talk in this way. He had read little, but had studied the dictionary with considerable diligence. His ideas were few and far between, but his words were many and diversified, long and hard, sometimes connected in the most absurd and ludicrous manner. Most of the illiterate who heard him thought he was highly educated and intelligent, while men of taste and judgment considered him greatly deficient in the first rudiments of correct speaking.
Mr. Hill and his friend Mr. Pope made a call one day last spring upon Squire Foster. As they came to the front door of his house Mr. Hill said to Mr. Pope,--
”Will you do me the exuberant honour of agitating the communicator of the ingress door, that the maid may receive the information that some attendant individuals are leisurely waiting at the exterior of the mansion to propose their interrogatories after the resident proprietor.”
”Did you want me to pull the door bell for you?” asked Mr. Pope.
”If you have that extremely obliging state of mind, which will permit you to do that deed of exceeding condescension, I shall experience the deepest emotionals of unprecedented grat.i.tude,” replied Mr. Hill.
”Why didn't you say, If you please? and have done with it,” replied Mr.
Pope, in a manner which indicated impatience at his gibberish.
The servant appeared and opened the door.
”Will you have the propitiousness, the kindness to stay and communicate unto me whether Squire Foster is in his residence?” said Mr. Hill.
The girl looked vacant, not knowing what to make of his question.
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