int. One has reached
the woolsack by political thimble-rigging, which means starting
patriot, and turning, when the price is offered, a ministerial hack.
He forks a drunken dean, his son, into a Father-in-Godship with all
the trifling temporalities attendant on the same. Well, the other
fellow is a 'regular go-a-head,' denounces popery, calculates the
millennium, alarms thereby elderly women of both sexes, edifies old
maids, who retire to their closets in the evening with the Bible in
one hand, and a brandy-bottle in the other; and what he likes best,
spiritualizes with the younger ones."

"Stop, dear James." The emphasis on the word _spiritualize_ had
alarmed my mother, who, to tell the truth, had a slight touch of the
prevailing malady, and, but for the counteracting influence of the
commander, might have been deluded into saintship by degrees.

The great toe was, however, again awfully invaded, and my father's
spiritual state of mind not all improved by the second twinge, which
was a heavy one.

"Why, d----n it--"

"Don't curse, dear James."

"Curse! I will; for if you had the gout, you would swear like a
trooper."

"Indeed I would not."

"Ah, Mary," replied my father, "between twinges, if you knew the
comfort of a curse or two--it relieves one so."

"That, indeed, James, must be but a sorry consolation, as Mr. Cantwell
said--"

"Oh! d----n Cantwell," roared my father, "a fellow that will tell you
that there is but one path to heaven, and that he has discovered it.
Pish! Mary, the grand route is open as the mail-coach road, and Papist
and Protestant, Quaker and Anabaptist, may jog along at even pace. I'm
not altogether sure about Jews and Methodists. One bearded vagabond
at Portsmouth charged me, when I was going to the Peninsula, ten
shillings a pound for exchanging bank notes for specie, and every
guinea the circumcised scoundrel gave was a light one. He'll fry--or
has fried already--and my poor bewildered old aunt, under the skillful
management of the Methodist preachers, who for a dozen years in their
rambles, had made her house an inn, left the three thousand five
per cents, which I expected, to blow the gospel-trumpet, either in
California or the Cape--for, God knows, I never particularly inquired
in which country the trumpeter was to sound 'boot and saddle,' after I
had ascertained that the doting fool had made a legal testament quite
sufficient for the purposes of the holy knaves who humbugged he