 shrieking hysterics, and there would
be a wild cry for sal-volatile and burnt feathers. »Impossible!« would be
pronounced here: »untrue!« would be responded there. »Inartistic!« would be
solemnly decided. Note well! Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it
is, somehow, always denounced as a lie: they disown it, cast it off, throw it on
the parish; whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the
sheer fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural: the
little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, - the honest, lawful bantling, all
the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and, as you are the legitimate
urchin, rude, unwashed, and naughty, you must stand down.
    Make way for Mr. Sweeting.
    Here he comes, with his lady on his arm; the most splendid and the
weightiest woman in Yorkshire: Mrs. Sweeting, formerly Miss Dora Sykes. They
were married under the happiest auspices. Mr. Sweeting having been just inducted
to a comfortable living, and Mr. Sykes being in circumstances to give Dora a
handsome portion. They lived long and happily together, beloved by their
parishioners, and by a numerous circle of friends.
    There! I think the varnish has been put on very nicely.
    Advance, Mr. Donne.
    This gentleman turned out admirably: far better than either you or I could
possibly have expected, reader. He, too, married a most sensible, quiet, lady-
little woman: the match was the making of him: he became an exemplary domestic
character, and a truly active parish-priest (as a pastor, he, to his dying day,
conscientiously refused to act). The outside of the cup and platter he burnished
up with the best polishing-powder; the furniture of the altar and temple he
looked after with the zeal of an upholsterer, - the care of a cabinet-maker. His
little school, his little church, his little parsonage, all owed their erection
to him; and they did him credit: each was a model in its way: if uniformity and
taste in architecture had been the same thing as consistency and earnestness in
religion, what a shepherd of a Christian flock Mr. Donne would have made! There
was one art in the mastery of which nothing mortal ever surpassed Mr. Donne - it
was that of begging. By his own unassisted efforts, he begged all the money for
all his erections. In this matter he
