world. May deeds like this increase!
So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced
On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced
Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch
This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch
Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite
All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"

So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,
Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?
And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--
Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.

The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had on these two miserable beings,
may be taken as typical of the enormous influence wielded by Bunyan in
his own time. The most innocent among us had overwhelming qualms in
regard to our sins, as children when we listened to our mothers read the
book. I remember having confessed some childish peccadillo that was
weighing on my small mind as the first result of my thoroughly aroused
sense of guilt. In these early years of the Twentieth Century, such a
feeling seems almost as far removed as the days of Bunyan. A sense of
guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present
day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his
wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's
Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan
himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his
popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people
flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He
went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large
chapel in Southwark which was invariably thronged with eager worshipers.

Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the instant effect of his personality
upon Tab.

"There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels
When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!
He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,
And in the day, earth grow another something quite
Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."

And again

"Then all at once rose he:
His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:
Up went his hands."

It is like a clever bit of stage business to make Ned and Tab use the
shoe laces to tie up the han