better than itself; a good hen will lay to a bit of earthen.  But the discourse of your ministerial vampire, fastening by some mystical process upon the hearer who has life of his own,—­though not every one has that,—­sucks and sucks and sucks; and he is exhausted while the preacher is refreshed.  So it happens that your born bore is never weary of his own boring; he thrives upon it; while he seems to be giving, he is mysteriously taking in—­he is drinking your blood.

But you say nobody is obliged to read a sermon.  O my unsophisticated friend! if a man will put his thoughts—­or his words, if thoughts are lacking—­between covers,—­spread his banquet, and respectfully invite Public Taste to partake of it, Public Taste being free to decline, then your observation is sound.  If an author quietly buries himself in his book,—­very good! hic jacet; peace to his ashes!

                          “The times have been,
  That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
  And there an end; but now they rise again,”

as Macbeth observes, with some confusion of syntax, excusable in a person of his circumstances.  Now, suppose they—­or he—­the man whose brains are out—­goes about with his coffin under his arm, like my worthy uncle? and suppose he blandly, politely, relentlessly insists upon reading to you, out of that octavo sarcophagus, passages which in his opinion prove that he is not only not dead, but immortal?  If such a man be a stranger, snub him; if a casual acquaintance, met in an evil hour, there is still hope,—­doors have locks, and there are two sides to a street, and nearsightedness is a blessing, and (as a last resort) buttons may be sacrificed (you remember Lamb’s story of Coleridge), and left in the clutch of the fatal fingers.  But one of your own kindred, and very respectable, adding the claim of misfortune to his other claims upon you,—­pachydermatous to slights, smilingly persuasive, gently persistent,—­as imperturbable as a ship’s wooden figurehead through all the ups and downs of the voyage of life, and as insensible to cold water;—­in short, an uncle like my uncle, whom there was no getting rid of;—­what the deuce would you do?

Exactly; run away as I did.  There was nothing else to be done, unless, indeed, I had throttled the old gentleman; in which case I am confident that one of our modern model juries would have brought in the popular verdict of justifiable insanity.  But, being a peaceable man, I was averse to extreme measures.  So I did the next best thing,—­consulted my wife, and retired to this village.

Then consider the shock to my feelings when I looked up that day and saw the enemy of our peace stalking into our little Paradise with his book under his arm and his carpet-bag in his hand! coming with his sermons and his shirts, prepared to stay a week—­that is to say a year—­that is to say forever, if we would suffer him,—­and how was he to be hindered by any desperate measures short of burning the house down!