acher
halted, and looked at Mr. Jobbins with a soft, relaxing gaze. Jobbins
appeared as if he would come to church forever, and never cheat any
sound clergyman again; whereupon the generous divine omitted a whole
page of menaces prepared for him, and passed prematurely to the tender
strain which always winds up a good sermon.
Now what did Jobbins do in return for all this magnanimous mercy?
Invited to dine with the senior church-warden upon the strength of
having been at church, and to encourage him for another visit, and being
asked, as soon as ever decency permitted, what he thought of Parson
Upround's doctrine, between two crackles of young griskin (come straight
from the rectory pig-sty), he was grieved to express a stern opinion
long remembered at Flamborough:
"Ca' yo yon mon 'Dr. Uproond?' I ca' un 'Dr. Upandoon.'"
From that day forth the rector of the parish was known far and wide as
"Dr. Upandown," even among those who loved him best. For the name well
described his benevolent practice of undoing any harsh thing he might
have said, sometimes by a smile, and very often with a shilling, or a
basket of spring cabbages. So that Mrs. Upround, when buttoning up his
coat--which he always forgot to do for himself--did it with the words,
"My dear, now scold no one; really it is becoming too expensive." "Shall
I abandon duty," he would answer, with some dignity, "while a shilling
is sufficient to enforce it?"
Dr. Upround's people had now found out that their minister and
magistrate discharged his duty toward his pillow, no less than to his
pulpit. His parish had acquired, through the work of generations, a
habit of getting up at night, and being all alive at cock-crow; and the
rector (while very new amongst them) tried to bow--or rather rise--to
night-watch. But a little of that exercise lasted him for long; and he
liked to talk of it afterward, but for the present was obliged to drop
it. For he found himself pale, when his wife made him see himself; and
his hours of shaving were so dreadful; and scarcely a bit of fair dinner
could be got, with the whole of the day thrown out so. In short, he
settled it wisely that the fishers of fish must yield to the habits of
fish, which can not be corrected; but the fishers of men (who can live
without catching them) need not be up to all their hours, but may take
them reasonably.
His parishioners--who could do very well without him, as far as
that goes, all the week, and b
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