And so, in such senseless manner, they are now skirting the golden harvest-fields, recalling perhaps the bright fancy that has given the 'Skylark' to the world, or mindful of "liquid Peneus" and "darkened Tempe." Presently there burst out of the thicket two ruffians, with rags torn and bespattered, caked with summer's dust and mildewed by winter's rain. As they approached their voices sounded devilish and unearthly. They raised one long plaint of deep-toned, hard-set blasphemy. Their every word was shotted with an oath. Hoarse with brandy, bitter with malevolence, they cursed at the plenty of the harvest,--at the patient cattle grazing in the fields,--at the crimson poppy blowing in the ditch,--at the buzzing insects, at the ripening orchards. They cursed at the luck of the skittle-alley; they cursed at the insolence of the rulers of the land. When the devil made war with heaven, this must have been the roar of his artillery.
We looked at our friend--for this has become a personal narrative, as may already have been conjectured--and we marked the pain and sorrow of heart that had visibly overcome him. Silently he seemed to implore protection from the great span of universe surrounding us--for it was he who was the gentler and more loyal spirit of the two. Then, as the curses and ribaldry died away, he emerged slowly as from beneath a stupefying load. Presently he fell to talking of the strange perverseness with which men have always clung to this undying evil, and cited the Levitical story of "the son of the Israelitish woman,"--the impious oaths demanded of old time by emperors and satraps, and the resistance of the martyred Polycarp.
Who knows but that at that moment we may have thought our friend little better than a fool, and his words the drivel of idiotcy? We have said somewhere, speaking of morality, that we have no opinion of professions of it. It must be known that he was mild and retiring and submissive. He could not give blow for blow as other boys could; he could not cheat or lie or gamble as other boys did. He was more awkward of limb and coarser dressed. Anyhow, we have set down here some of our first impressions of swearing, and now we are cursorily writing its history.