FullReads

I was arranging them in their places and looking at their names, when I saw that one of them was called Taylor’s Sermons, and I thought I would keep that one out and preach a real sermon out of it when I had read prayers. Of course I had to do the responses as well as “Dearly beloved brethren” and those things, and I had to sing the hymns too, for the books could not do anything, and Godfather Gilpin was asleep.

When I had finished the service I stood behind a chair that was full of newspapers, for a pulpit, and I lifted up Taylor’s Sermons, and rested it against the chair, and began to look to see what I would preach. It was an old book, bound in brown leather, and ornamented with gold, with a picture of a man in a black gown and a round black cap and a white collar in the beginning; and there was a list of all the sermons with their names and the texts. I read it through, to see which sounded the most interesting, and I didn’t care much for any of them. However, the last but one was called “A Funeral Sermon, preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honourable the Countess of Carbery;” and I wondered what obsequies were, and who the Countess of Carbery was, and I thought I would preach that sermon and try to find out.

There was a very long text, and it was not a very easy one. It was: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again: neither doth GOD respect any person: yet doth He devise means that His banished be not expelled from Him.”

The sermon wasn’t any easier than the text, and half the s‘s were like f‘s which made it rather hard to preach, and there was Latin mixed up with it, which I had to skip. I had preached two pages when I got into the middle of a long sentence, of which part was this: “Every trifling accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles itself, that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave: so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us.”

I knew the meaning of the words “wrinkles,” and “old age.” Godfather Gilpin’s forehead had unusually deep furrows, and, almost against my will, I turned so quickly to look if his wrinkles were at all like the graves in the churchyard, that Taylor’s Sermons, in its heavy binding, slipped from the pulpit and fell to the ground.

And Godfather Gilpin woke up, and (quite forgetting that he was really the old gentleman in the pew with the knocker) said, “Dear me, dear me! is that Jeremy Taylor that you are knocking about like a football? My dear child, I can’t lend you my books to play with if you drop them on to the floor.”

I took it up in my arms and carried it sorrowfully to Godfather Gilpin. He was very kind, and said it was not hurt, and I might go on playing with the others; but I could see him stroking its brown leather and gold back, as if it had been bruised and wanted comforting, and I was far too sorry about it to go on preaching, even if I had had anything to preach.

I picked up the smallest book I could see in the congregation, and sat down and pretended to read. There were pictures in it, but I turned over a great many, one after the other, before I could see any of them, my eyes were so full of tears of mortification and regret. The first picture I saw when my tears had dried up enough to let me see was a very curious one indeed. It was a picture of two men carrying what looked like another man covered with a blue quilt, on a sort of bier. But the funny part about it was the dress of the men. They were wrapped up in black cloaks, and had masks over their faces, and underneath the picture was written, “Fratelli della Misericordia”–“Brothers of Pity.”