must get on! Change the slide, boy; I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it all.
I want to get home and go to bed."

He maundered on in this way, uttering even worse nonsense than I have
set down, and mingling with it soiled and dusty commonplaces of
religion, every now and then dwelling for a moment or two upon his own
mental and physical declension from the admirable being he once was. He
reached the height of his absurdity in describing the resistance of the
two pilgrims to the manifold temptations of Vanity Fair, which he so set
forth as to take from Christian and Faithful the smallest possible
appearance of merit in turning their backs upon them.

Cornelius was in fits of laughter, which he scarcely tried to choke.
When the dreary old soul drew near where he sat, smelling abominably of
strong drink, the only thing that kept his merriment within bounds was
the dread that the man might address him personally, and so draw upon
him the attention of the audience.

Very different was the mood of Hester. To the astonishment of Cornelius,
when at last they rose to go, there were tears in her eyes. The misery
of the whole thing was too dreadful to her! The lantern itself must, she
thought, have been made when the invention was in its infancy, and its
pictured slides seemed the remnants of various outworn series. Those of
the Rake's Progress were something too hideous and lamentable to be
dwelt upon. And the ruinous, wretched old man did not merely seem to
have taken to this as a last effort, but to have in his dotage turned
back upon his life course, and resumed a half-forgotten trade--or
perhaps only an accomplishment of which he had made use for the benefit
of his people when he was a clergyman--to find that the faculty for it
he once had, and on which he had reckoned to carry him through, had