Indeed, at the outset, let there be a protest entered on behalf of the
sinner against this unnecessary pity of the saint. It is a part of that
false halo with which enthusiastic admiration (reckless of gilding and
ruinously prodigal of ochre) delights to endue the favored heads of the
_beati_. The saint himself countenances the folly, and meekly inclines
his head (sideways) to the rays. It is a part of the capital of the
calling to look interesting. The revered and reverend Charles Honeyman,
in the hands of that acute manager, Mr. Sherrick, was bidden to sit in
his pew at evening service and _cough_. A qualified consumption and a
moderate bronchitis are no bad substitutes for eloquence, learning, and
that indiscreet piety which is so careless of feminine favor as to
bring into the pulpit a robust person and to the dinner-table a healthy
appetite.

But the saint, if he have a reasonable sense of his pastoral duty, gets,
_malgré lui_, a very fair share of that open-air medicine which is
supposed to be the great lack of his profession. For if he be a
clergyman in a rural parish of tolerable extent and with no great
superfluity of wealth, he will not want for either air or exercise. The
George Herbert so situated finds by no means his whole round of duty in
the study. Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles
from the parsonage; but the thoughtless creature actually expects a
weekly visit and half-hour's reading of certain old familiar English
literature, and will remind her pastor of it, if the expected day pass
without his coming. Jones and his wife, who live in just the other
direction, are wantonly apt, upon the insufficient plea of a long walk,
to be missed from their wonted pew on a stormy Sunday, and must be
looked up. Little Mary Gray has not been to Sunday-school. Cause
suspected,--insufficient shoes. Bessy Bell, up the cross-road, quite
over beyond Beman's Farms, is likewise delinquent, from the opposite