way, in a moment of weakness, of utter exhaustion and despair, and
consent to publish him; and when I reflect what numbers of inoffensive
persons, in the quiet walks of life, have been made to suffer the
infliction of that Bore's Own Book, I pause, I stand aghast at the
inscrutability of Divine Providence.

Don't think me profane, and don't for a moment imagine I underrate the
function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good
sermon,--one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that
takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual
sponge that absorbs your powers of body and soul, so that the longer you
listen the more you are impoverished? A merely poor sermon isn't so bad;
you will find, if you are the right kind of a hearer, that it will
suggest something better than itself; a good hen will lay to a bit of
earthen. But the discourse of your ministerial vampire, fastening by
some mystical process upon the hearer who has life of his own,--though
not every one has that,--sucks and sucks and sucks; and he is exhausted
while the preacher is refreshed. So it happens that your born bore is
never weary of his own boring; he thrives upon it; while he seems to be
giving, he is mysteriously taking in--he is drinking your blood.

But you say nobody is obliged to _read_ a sermon. O my unsophisticated
friend! if a man will put his thoughts--or his words, if thoughts are
lacking--between covers,--spread his banquet, and respectfully invite
Public Taste to partake of it, Public Taste being free to decline, then
your observation is sound. If an author quietly buries himself in his
book,--very good! hic jacet; peace to his ashes!

"The times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,