it made the pilgrim look up. A gentleman who can speak in that true
style must know more than he says about such burdens as this of mine;
and, after all, he may be able, who knows, to give me some good advice in
my great straits. 'Pray, sir, open this secret to me, for I sorely stand
in need of good counsel.' Let him here who has no such burden as this
poor pilgrim had cast the first stone at Christian; I cannot. If one who
looked like a gentleman came to me to-night and told me how I would on
the spot get to a peace of conscience never to be lost again, and how I
would get a heart to-night that would never any more plague and pollute
me, I would be mightily tempted to forget what all my former teachers had
told me and try this new Gospel. And especially if the gentleman said
that the remedy was just at hand. 'Pray, sir,' said the breathless and
spiritless man, 'wilt thou, then, open this secret to me?'

The wit and the humour and the satire of the rest of the scene must be
fully enjoyed over the great book itself. The village named Morality,
hard by the hill; that judicious man Legality, who dwells in the first
house you come at after you have turned the hill; Civility, the pretty
young man that Legality hath to his son; the hospitality of the village;
the low rents and the cheap provisions, and all the charities and
amenities of the place,--all together make up such a picture as you
cannot get anywhere out of John Bunyan. And then the pilgrim's stark
folly in entering into Worldly-Wiseman's secret; his horror as the hill
began to thunder and lighten and threaten to fall upon him; the sudden
descent of Evangelist; and then the plain-spoken words that passed
between the preacher and the pilgrim,--don't say again that the poorest
of the Puritans were without letters, or that they had not their own
esoteric writings full of fun and frolic; don't say that again till you
are a pilgrim yourself, and have our John Bunyan for one of your classics
by heart.