“Brother, he was a Dissenter; and, thank Heaven!
I am a Church-and-State man to the backbone!”
“Robert Hall was a brave man and a true soldier
under the Great Commander,” said my father,
artfully.
The Captain mechanically carried his forefinger to
his forehead in military fashion, and saluted the
book respectfully.
“I have another copy for you, Pisistratus,—that
is mine which I have lent Roland. This, which
I bought for you to-day, you will keep.”
“Thank you, sir,” said I listlessly, not
seeing what great good the “Life of Robert Hall”
could do me, or why the same medicine should suit
the old weather-beaten uncle and the nephew yet in
his teens.
“I have said nothing,” resumed my father,
slightly bowing his broad temples, “of the Book
of books, for that is the lignum vitm, the cardinal
medicine for all. These are but the subsidiaries;
for as you may remember, my dear Kitty, that I have
said before,—we can never keep the system
quite right unless we place just in the centre of the
great ganglionic system, whence the nerves carry its
influence gently and smoothly through the whole frame,
The Saffron Bag!”
(1) Cicero’s joke on a senator who was the son
of a tailor: “Thou hast touched the thing
sharply” (or with a needle, acu).
(2) Rubruquis, sect. xii.
After breakfast the next morning I took my hat to
go out. when my father, looking at me, and seeing
by my countenance that I had not slept, said gently,—
“My dear Pisistratus, you have not tried my
medicine yet.”
“What medicine, sir?”
“Robert Hall.”
“No, indeed, not yet,” said I, smiling.
“Do so, my son, before you go out; depend on
it you will enjoy your walk more.”
I confess that it was with some reluctance I obeyed.
I went back to my own room and sat resolutely down
to my task. Are there any of you, my readers,
who have not read the “Life of Robert Hall?”
If so, in the words of the great Captain Cuttle,
“When found, make a note of it.”
Never mind what your theological opinion is,—Episcopalian,
Presbyterian, Baptist, Paedobaptist, Independent, Quaker,
Unitarian, Philosopher, Freethinker,—send
for Robert Hall! Yea, if there exists yet on
earth descendants of the arch-heretics which made such
a noise in their day,—men who believe,
with Saturninus, that the world was made by seven
angels; or with Basilides, that there are as many heavens
as there are days in the year; or with the Nicolaitanes,
that men ought to have their wives in common (plenty
of that sect still, especially in the Red Republic);
or with their successors, the Gnostics, who believed
in Jaldaboath; or with the Carpacratians, that the
world was made by the devil; or with the Cerinthians
and Ebionites and Nazarites (which last discovered
that the name of Noah’s wife was Ouria, and that
