The Recreations of a Country Parson eBook

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about The Recreations of a Country Parson.

The Recreations of a Country Parson eBook

Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about The Recreations of a Country Parson.
horn.  I can imagine, perfectly well, what kind of effect such a mode of life would have had on myself.  And very few readers are likely to have within themselves an intellectual and moral fibre of bent and nature so determined, that they are not what they are, mainly through the influence of the external circumstances which have been acting upon them all through life.  Did you ever think to yourself that you would like to make trial for a few days’ space, of certain modes of life very different from your own, and very different from each other?  I have done so many a time.  And a lazy summer afternoon here in the green shade is the time to try and picture out such.  Think of being to-day in a stifling counting-house in the hot bustling town.  I have been especially interested in a glazed closet which I have seen in a certain immensely large and very crowded shop in a certain beautiful city.  It is a sort of little office partitioned off from the shop it has a sloping table, with three or four huge books bound in parchment.  There is a ceaseless bustle, crush, and hum of talking outside; and inside there are clerks Bitting writing, and receiving money through little pigeonholes.  I should like to sit for two or three days in a corner of that little retreat; and to write a sermon there.  It would be curious to sit there to-day in the shadow, and to see the warm sunbeams only outside through a distant window, resting on sloping roofs.  If one did not get seasick, there would be something fresh in a summer day at sea.  It is always cool and breezy there, at least in these latitudes, on the warmest day.  Above all there is no dust.  Think of the luxurious cabin of a fine yacht to-day.  Deep cushions; rich curtains; no tremor of machinery; flowers, books, carpets inches thick; and through the windows, dim hills and blue sea.  Then, flying away in spirit, let us go to-day (only in imagination) into the Courts of Law at Westminster.  The atmosphere on a summer day in these scenes is always hot and choky.  There is a suggestion of summer time in the sunshine through the dusty lanterns in the roofs.  Thinking of these courts, and all their belongings and associations, here on this day, is like the child already mentioned when he puts his foot into a very cold corner of his bed, that he may pull it back with special sense of what a blessing it is that he is not bodily in that very cold corner.  Yes, let us enjoy this spot where we are, the more keenly, for thinking of the very last place in this world where we should like to-day to be.  I went lately (on a bright day in May) to revive old remembrances of Westminster Hall.  The judges of the present time are very able and incorruptible men; but they are much uglier than the judges I remember in my youth.  Several of them, in their peculiar attire, hardly looked like human beings.  Almost all wrore wigs a great deal too large for them; I mean much too thick and massive.  The Queen’s Counsel, for the most part, seemed much younger than they used to be; but
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The Recreations of a Country Parson from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.