The Minister's Charge

the poor boy false hopes. You ought to have discouraged him-that would have been the most merciful way-if you knew the poetry was bad. Now, he will go on building all s

ng pleasant things to me, my dear,

e time I s

y own. How do you know-Oh, do get up, you implacable cripple!" he

r mouth!" cri

me with your interminable consequences. I dare say the boy will never think of my praise again. And besides, as I was sayi

oice. I could tell you were

that I was dishonest t

d see that he pinned his

er reason to a poet who reads his own verses to you. But come, now, Lucy, let me off a syllable or two. I-I have a conscience, you know well enough, and

rs. Sewell, with the darkling reserve of la

never can tell where the lightning is going to strike. He has some idea of rhyme, and some perception of reason, and-yes,

ourself in that way, David,

hollow behind them. "I declare," he said, "the loneliness of that place almost broke my heart. There!" he added, as the faint sickle gleamed

topped the largest gap in the tumbled stone wall. He still gripped

guess you've seen the last of 'em for one while. I'm 'fra

over my right shoulder. Did you hear-hear him," he asked, in a

!" cried Mrs. Sewell. "These m

the germ, and I listened on and on, expecting every moment that he was coming to some passage with a little lift or life in it; and when he got to the end, and hadn't come to it, I couldn't quite pull myself together to say so. I had gone there so full of the wish to recognise and encourage, that I couldn't turn about for the other thing. Well! I shall know another time how to value a rural neighbourhood report of the existence of a local poet. Usually there is some hardheaded cynic in the community with native perception enough to enlighten the rest as to the true value of the phenomenon; but there seems to have been none here. I ought to have come sooner to see him, and then I could have ha

hat they would be lost if they did not do right; it was much simpler than to make them understand that they were often to be good for reasons not immediately connected with their present or future comfort, and that they could not confidently expect to be lost for any given transgression, or even to be lost at all. He found it necessary

ages of a long poem which Barker said he had written since he got the fall work done. The passages were not submitted for Sewell's criticism, but were offered as examples of the character of the whole poem, for which the author wished to find a publisher. They were not without ideas of a didactic and satirical sort, but they seemed so wanting in literary art beyond a mechanical facility of versification, that Sewell wondered how the writer should have mastered t

to say the least, was very ill-timed. He had often warned other sinners who came to him in like resentment that it was this very quality of inopportuneness that was perhaps the most sanative and divine property of retribution; the eternal justice fell upon us, he said, at the very moment when we were least able to bear it, or thought ourselves so; but now in his own case the clear-sighted prop

give himself breath before he faced her with the fact that he had received such a letter. Nothing in its way was more terrible to this good man than the righteousness of that good woman. In their case, as in that of most other couples who cherish an ideal of dutiful living, she was the custodian of their potential virtue,

ed, with a keen glance at the face h

ar," answered Sewell, with a boldness that he kne

's appointed for this afternoon at two o'clock, and the poor thing has set her heart upon having you, and you must go. In fact, I promised you would. I'll see that you're not di

e cruel," in which he taught how great harm could be done by the habit of saying what are called kind things. He showed that this habit arose not from goodness of heart, or from the desire to make others happy, but from the wish to spare one's-self the troublesome duty of formulating the truth so that it would perform its heavenly office without wounding those whom it was intended to heal. He warned his hearers that the kind things spoken from this motive were so many sins committed against the soul of the flatterer and the soul of him t

rch that day, and joined him when some ladies who had lingered to thank

their countenances while you were going on. Did you think of that po

ewell gravely; "he was in

though I was so vexed with you. But nothing has come of it, and I suppose there are cases where

ghteous warmth from his atonement; and now a sudden temptation to play with

t it altogether if it's made you see what danger you run from

into my mind.

from Barker and to ask her advice about answering it. If it had been really a serious matter, he would have told her at once; but being the thing it was, he did not know just how to approach it, after his first concealment. He knew that, to begin with, he would have to account for his mistake in attempting to keep it from her, and would have to bear some just upbraiding for this u