It Is Never Too Late to Mend. Charles Reade Reade

sir, that I agree with you; the pulpit should be consecrated to eternal truths, not passing events.”

      “Good! very good! Well, then?”

      “What Mr. Hawes complains of was a mere accident.”

      “An accident, Mr. Jones? Oh, Mr. Jones!”

      “An accident which I undertake to explain to Mr. Hawes himself.”

      “By all means; that will be the best way of making friends again. I need not tell you that a jail could not go on in which the governor and the chaplain did not pull together. The fact is, Mr. Jones, the clergy, of late, have been assuming a little too much, and that has made the laity a little jealous. Now, although you are a clergyman, you are her majesty's servant so long as you are here, and must co-operate with the general system of the jail. Come, sir, you are younger than I am; let me give you a piece of advice, 'DON'T OVERSTEP YOUR DUTY,' etc.”

      In this strain Mr. Williams buz, buz, buzzed longer than I can afford him paper, it is so dear. He pumped a stream of time-honored phrases on his hearer, and dissolved away with him as the overflow of a pump carries away a straw on its shallow stream down a stable-yard.

      When the pump was pumped dry he stopped.

      Then the chaplain, who had listened with singular politeness, got in a word. “You forget, sir, I have resigned the chaplaincy of the jail?”

      “Oh! ah! yes! well, then, I need say no more; good-day, Mr. Jones.”

      “Good-morning, sir.”

      Soon after this up came Hawes with a cheerful countenance.

      “Well, parson, are you to manage the prisoners and I to preach to them, or are we to go on as we are?”

      “Things are to go on as they are, Mr. Hawes; but that is nothing to me, I have discharged my conscience. I have remonstrated against the seventies practiced on our prisoners. COLD WATER HAS BEEN THROWN ON MY REMONSTRANCES, and I shall therefore interfere no more.”

      “That is the wise way to look at it, you may depend!”

      “We shall see which was in the right. I have discharged my conscience. But, Mr. Hawes, I am hurt you should say I preached a sermon against you.”

      “I dare say you are, sir, but who began it; if you had not talked of complaining to the justices of me, I should never have said a word against you.”

      “That is all settled; but it is due to my character to show you that I had no intention of pointing at you or any living creature from the pulpit.”

      “Well, make me believe that.”

      “If you will do me the favor to come to my room I can prove it to you.”

      The chaplain took the governor to his room and opened two drawers in a massive table.

      “Mr. Hawes,” said he, “do you see this pile of sermons in this right-hand drawer?”

      “I see them,” said Hawes, with a doleful air, “and I suppose I shall hear some of them before long.”

      “These,” said Mr. Jones, smiling with perfect good-humor at the innocuous sneer, “are sermons I composed when I was curate of Little-Stoke. Of late I have been going regularly through my Little-Stoke discourses, as you may see. I take one from the pile in this drawer, and after first preaching it in the jail I place it in the left drawer on that smaller pile.”

      “That you mayn't preach it again by accident; well, that is business.”

      “If you look into the left pile near the top, you will find the one I preached against profane discourse, with the date at which it was first composed.”

      “Here it is, sir—Little-Stoke, May 15, 1847.”

      “Well, Mr. Hawes, now was that written against you?—come!”

      “No! I confess it could not; but look here, if a man sends a bullet into me, it doesn't matter to me whether he made the gun on purpose or shot me out of an old one that he had got by him.”

      “But I tell you that I took the sermon out in its turn, and knew no more what it was about until I opened it in the pulpit, than I knew what this one is about which I am going to preach next Sunday morning—it was all chance.”

      “It was my bad luck, I suppose,” said Hawes a little sulkily.

      “And mine, too. Could I anticipate that a discourse composed for and preached to a rural congregation would be deemed to have a personal application here?”

      “Well, no!”

      “I have now only to add that I extremely regret the circumstance.”

      “Say no more, sir. When a gentleman expresses his regret to another gentleman, there is an end of the grievance.

      “I will take care the sort of thing never happens again.”

      “Enough said, sir.”

      “It never can, however, for I shall preach but one more Sunday here.”

      “And I'm very sorry for it, Mr. Jones.”

      “And after this occurrence I am determined to write both sermons for the occasion, so there is sure to be nothing personal in them.”

      “Yes, that is the surest way. Well, sir, you and I never had but this one little misunderstanding, and now that is explained, we shall part friends.”

      “A glass of ale, Mr. Hawes?”

      “I don't care if I do, sir.” (The glasses were filled and emptied.) “I must go and look after my chickens; the justices have ordered Gillies to be flogged. You will be there, I suppose, in half an hour.”

      “Well, if my attendance is not absolutely necessary—”

      “We will excuse you, sir, if not convenient.”

      “Thank you—good-morning!” and the reconciled officials parted.

      Little Gillies was hoisted to receive twenty lashes; at the twelfth the governor ordered him down.

      He broke off the tale as our magazines do, with a promise—“To be continued.”

      Little Gillies, like their readers, cried out, “No, sir. Oh, sir! please flog me to an end, and ha' done with it. I don't feel the cuts near so much now—my back seems dead like.”

      Little Gillies was arguing against himself. Hawes had not divided his punishment with the view of lessening his pain. It was droll, but more sad than droll to hear the poor little fellow begging Hawes to flog him to an end, to flog him out; with similar idioms.

      “Hold your [oath] noise!” Hawes shrunk with disgust from noise in his prison, and could not comprehend why the prisoners could not take their punishments without infringing upon the great and glorious silence of which the jail was the temple and he the high priest. “The beggars get no good by kicking up a row,” argued he.

      “Hold your noise!—take him to his cell!”

      Whether it was because he had desecrated the temple with noise, or from the accident of having attracted the governor's attention, the weight of the system fell on this small object now.

      Gillies was ordered to make a fabulous number of crank revolutions—fabulous, at least, in connection with his tender age; he was put on the lightest crank, but the lightest was heavy to thirteen years. Not being the infant Hercules, he could not perform this labor; so Hawes put him in jacket and collar almost the whole day. His young and supple frame was in his favor, but once or twice he could hardly help shamming, and then they threw half a bucket over him.

      The next day he was put on the crank, and not being able to complete the task that was set him before dinner, he was strapped up until the evening. The next day the governor tried another tack. He took