Julian Home. F. W. Farrar

intolerable hypocrite?”

      “Hush, Kennedy, hush! Don’t call him a hypocrite. His mode of religion may be very offensive to us, and yet it may be sincere.”

      “Faugh! the idea of asking you, ‘How’s your soul?’ It reminds me of a friend of mine who was suddenly asked by a minister in a train ‘if he didn’t feel an aching void?’ ‘An aching void? Where?’ said Jones, in a tone of alarm, for he was an unimaginative person. ‘Within, sir, within!’ said the stranger. Jones felt anxiously to find whether one of his ribs was accidentally protruding, but finding them all safe, set down the minister for a lunatic, and moved to the further end of the carriage.”

      Julian smiled; he was more accustomed to this kind of phraseology than his friend, and knew that outrageous as it was to good taste under the circumstances, it yet might spring from a sincere and honourable motive, or at best must be regarded as the natural result of innate vulgarity and mistaken training.

      “Surely at best,” continued Kennedy, “it’s a most unwarrantable impertinence for a fellow like that to want to dabble his ignorant and coarse hand in the hallowed secrets of the microcosm. Not to one’s nearest and dearest friend, not to one’s mother or brother would one babble promiscuously on such awful themes; and to have the soul’s sublime and eternal emotions, its sacred and unspoken communings, lugged out into farcical prominence by such conversational cant as that, is to dry up the very fountain of true religion, and put a premium on the successful grin of an offensive hypocrisy.”

      Kennedy seemed quite agitated, and as usual found relief in striding up and down the room. His religious feelings were deep and real—none the less so for being hidden—and Hazlet’s language and manner had given him a rude shock.

      “Another hour in that fellow’s company would make me an infidel,” he exclaimed with quivering lip. “Pray for me, indeed, with some of his ‘sound and congenial friends.’ Faugh! ‘sound!’ how does he dare to judge whether his superiors are ‘sound’ or not? and why must he borrow a metaphor from Stilton cheeses when he’s talking of religious convictions.”

      “Why really, Kennedy,” said Julian, “to see the contempt written in your face, one would think you were an archangel looking at a black beetle, as a learned judge once observed. If you won’t regard Hazlet as a man and a brother, at least remember that he’s a vertebrate animal.”

      But Kennedy was not to be joked out of his indignation, so Julian continued. “I wish you knew more of Lillyston. At one time, I should have been nearly as much bothered by Hazlet as you, but Lillyston’s kind, genial good-humour with every one, and the genuine respectful sympathy which he shows even for things he can least understand, have made me much happier than I should have been. Now, he might have done Hazlet some good, whereas your opposition, my dear fellow, will only make him more rampant than ever. Ah, here Lillyston comes.”

      “What an honest open face,” said Kennedy.

      “Like the soul which looks through it, sans peur et sans reproche,” said Julian warmly.

      “Rather a contrast to the last comer,” murmured Kennedy, as he picked up his cap and gown to walk to the lecture-room.

      “There, don’t think of Hazlet any more,” said Julian.

      “ ‘He prayeth best who loveth best

       All things both great and small,

       For the dear God who loveth us,

       He made and loveth all.’

      “A capital good motto that; isn’t it, Hugh?”

      “I must love Hazlet as one of the very small things, then,” said the incorrigible Kennedy as he left the room with the other two.

      Hazlet was put on to construe during the lecture, and if anything could have shaken the brazen tower of his self-confidence, it would have been the egregious display of incapacity which followed; but Hazlet rather piqued himself on his indifference to the poor blind heathen poets, on whose names he usually dealt reprobation broadcast. “Like lions that die of an ass’s kick,” those wronged great souls lay prostrate before Hazlet’s wrathful heels.