Worldly-minded human beings engaged in trying to weave a cloak of righteousness out of their own evil deeds wherewith to hide their deformities, ugliness, and consumption, may be compared to a poor old deformed woman trying to weave a golden cloak out of rotten straw to hide the wretchedness and misery of Seven Dials.
Those engaged in reclaiming children from sin and ignorance are making themselves a silver ladder upon which to climb to golden fame.
When our ways are clouded by mysteries and doubts, we may take it for granted that we have got off the road, and are wandering among marshes and swamps from which fogs and poisonous vapours arise.
Satan often ties firebrands to the tails of hypocritical professing Christians, and uses them as Samson did his foxes.
At 6.30 on Tuesday morning I stepped out of doors with my travelling paraphernalia upon some six-inches deep of newly fallen snow. My only light was the flickering gas, which was miserable indeed. Underneath the snowy carpet the roads felt, and in fact were, like a sheet of glass. If the new soles upon my shoes had been beeswaxed and polished I could not have slipped and slurred about more. Sometimes my bags were in the snow, and at other times I was trying the resisting force of the lamp-posts. Some of the workmen as they passed me rolled about as if they were “tight,” and I daresay they thought me to be a brother chip. After three-quarters of an hour’s exercise for patience, temper, and legs, I arrived “safe and sound in wind and limb” in a third-class compartment, and without any hot-water bottles to cheer my onward course.
At Trent Station I spent five minutes with Mr. Taylor, the fine, good-looking station-master, in talking over the caste, kind, and character of the gipsies in India, in which country Mr. Taylor was a station-master for some time. At Settle I pulled up for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. The little refreshment-room, about ten feet square, was quite a delightfully warm, cosy nook. The glasses and decanters of variegated colours were sparkling, the fire was bright and cheerful, and the waitress brimmed over with smiles, grace, and good-nature. I was nearly frozen, and to jump from the freezing train to the warm sunny “bar” at one bound was enough almost to make me wish that a coal truck would get across the line to cause a delay for half-an-hour. It was not to be, and the cruel porter bawled out, “Take your seats, gentlemen!” and we were off to the snowy region of the North, where all things are not forgot and sheep looked like rabbits. In puffing along we passed through the snow-drifts, which two days previously had held bound by the icy hand of winter eleven trains and their freights of “live and dead stock” for twenty-four hours, bringing forth from the sympathetic wife of the station-master hot tea, cakes, and coffee for the travellers.