Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (3rd Series).

Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (3rd Series).

1.  Well, then, to begin with, this poor man’s name need not delay us long seeking it out.  In shorter time, and with surer success than I could give you the dictionary root of his name, if you will look within you will all see the visual image of this poor man’s name in your own heart.  For our hearts are all as full as they can hold of all kinds of desires; some good and some bad, some asleep and some awake, some alive and some dead, some raging like a hundred hungry lions, and some satisfied as a sleeping child.  Well, then, this mean man was called Mr. Desires-awake, and what his desires were awake after and set upon we have already seen in his head-dress and heard in his prayer.  His house, on the other hand, will not be so well known.  For it was less a house than a hut—­a hut hidden away out of sight and back behind Mr. Wet-eyes’ hut.  Mr. Desires-awake’s cottage was so mean and meagre that no one ever came to visit him unless it was his next-door neighbour.  They never left their cottages, those two poor men, unless it was to see one another; or, strange to tell, unless it was to go out at the city gate to see and to speak with their Prince.  And at such times their venturesomeness both astonished themselves and amused their Prince.  Sometimes he laughed to see them back at his door again; but more often he wept to see and hear them; all which made the guards of his pavilion to wonder who those two strange men might be.  And thus it was that if at any long interval of time any of the men of the city desired to see Mr. Desires-awake, he was sure to be found at the pavilion door of his Prince, or else in his neighbour’s cottage, or else at home in his own.  From year’s end to year’s end you might look in vain for either of those two poor men in the public resorts of Mansoul.  When all the town was abroad on holidays and fair-days and feast-days, those two mean men were then closest at home.  And when the booths of the town were full of all kinds of wares and merchandise, and all the greens in the town were full of games, and plays, and cheats, and fools, and apes, and knaves, only those two penniless men would abide shut up at home.  At home; or else together they would go to a market-stance set up by their Prince outside the walls where one was stationed to stand and to cry:  ’Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money.  Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?  Incline your ear and come to me; hear, and your soul shall live.’  And sometimes the Prince would go out in person to meet the two men with nothing to pay, and would Himself say to them, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, and white raiment, and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, till the two men, Mr. Desires-awake and Mr. Wet-eyes, would go home to their huts laden with their Prince’s free gifts and royal bounties.

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Project Gutenberg
Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.