be ceremoniously dressed.
They could not issue forth in flannels and sweater, with a towel round
the neck, as for a morning plunge in the river. The day was Sunday,
though Sunday had not dawned, and the plunge was into the river of
intellectual life. Moreover, they were bound by conscience to be
prompt. To have arrived late, even five minutes late, would have spoilt
the whole effect. It had to be six o'clock or nothing.
The Young Men's Debating Society was a newly formed branch of the
multifarous activity of the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. It met on Sunday
because Sunday was the only day that would suit everybody; and at six in
the morning for two reasons. The obvious reason was that at any other
hour its meetings would clash either with other activities or with the
solemnity of Sabbath meals. This obvious reason could not have stood by
itself; it was secretly supported by the recondite reason that the
preposterous hour of 6 a.m. appealed powerfully to something youthful,
perverse, silly, fanatical, and fine in the youths. They discovered the
ascetic's joy in robbing themselves of sleep and in catching chills, and
in disturbing households and chapel-keepers. They thought it was a
great thing to be discussing intellectual topics at an hour when a town
that ignorantly scorned intellectuality was snoring in all its heavy
brutishness. And it was a great thing. They considered themselves the
salt of the earth, or of that part of the earth. And I have an idea
that they were.
Edwin had joined this Society partly because he did not possess the art
of refusing, partly because the notion of it appealed spectacularly to
the martyr in him, and partly because it gave him an excuse for ceasing
to attend the afternoon Sunday school, which he loathed. Without such
an excuse he could never have told his father that he meant to give up
Sunday school. He could never have dared to do so. His father had what
Edwin deemed to be a superstitious and hypocritical regard for the
Sunday school. Darius never went near the Sunday school, and assuredly
in business and in home life he did not practise the precepts inculcated
at the Sunday school, and yet he always spoke of the Sunday school with
what was to Edwin a ridiculous reverence. Another of those problems in
his father's character which Edwin gave up in disgust!
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TWO.
The Society met in a small c
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