their threadbare garments, they had found the upward way so dreadfully
difficult that they both felt a real apprehension as to the future of
this light-hearted and light-headed youth. "You may find some difficulty
at the gate," somewhat bluntly broke in the oldest of the two pilgrims on
their young comrade. "I shall, no doubt, do at the gate as other good
people do," replied the young gentleman briskly. "But what have you to
show at the gate that may cause that the gate be opened to you?" "Why, I
know my Lord's will, and I have been a good liver all my days, and I pay
every man his own. I pray, moreover, and I fast. I pay tithes, and give
alms, and have left my country for whither I am going." Now, before we
go further: Do all you young gentlemen do as much as that? Have you
always been good livers? Have you paid every man and woman their due? Do
you pray to be called prayer? And, if so, when, and where, and what for,
and how long at a time? I do not ask if your private prayer-book is like
Bishop Andrewes' _Devotions_, which was so reduced to pulp with tears and
sweat and the clenching of his agonising hands that his literary
executors were with difficulty able to decipher it. Clito in the
_Christian Perfection_ was so expeditious with his prayers that he used
to boast that he could both dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an
hour. What was the longest time you ever took to dress or undress and
say your prayers? Then, again, there is another Anglican young gentleman
in the same High Church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the
Thirtieth of January. Did you ever deny yourself a glass of wine or a
cigar or an opera ticket for the church or the poor? Could you honestly
say that you know what tithes are? And is there a poor man or woman or
child in this whole city who will by any chance put your name into their
prayers and praises at bedtime to-night? I am afraid there are not many
young gentlemen in this house to-night who could cast a stone at that
brisk lad Ignorance, Vain-Hope, door in the side of the hill, and all. He
was not far from the kingdom of heaven; indeed, he got up to the very