"Mixtaque ridenti fundet colocasia acantho!"
But, to be sure, the novels, in spite of very inflammatory titles, such as "Fatal Sensibility," "Errors of the Heart," &c., were so harmless that I doubt if the sermons could have had much to say against their next-door neighbors--and that is all that can be expected by the rest of us.
A parrot dozing on his perch--some gold fish fast asleep in their glass bowl--two or three dogs on the rug, and Flimsey, Miss Jemima's spaniel, curled into a ball on the softest sofa--Mrs. Hazeldean's work-table, rather in disorder, as if it had been lately used--the _St. James's Chronicle_ dangling down from a little tripod near the Squire's arm-chair--a high screen of gilt and stamped leather fencing off the card table; all these, dispersed about a room large enough to hold them all and not seem crowded, offered many a pleasant resting-place for the eye, when it turned from the world of nature to the home of man.
But see, Captain Barnabas, fortified by his fourth cup of tea, has at length summoned courage to whisper to Mrs. Hazeldean, "don't you think the Parson will be impatient for his rubber?" Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at the Parson, and smiled; but she gave the signal to the Captain, and the bell was rung, lights were brought in, the curtains let down; in a few moments more the group had collected round the card-tables. The best of us are but human--that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people forget it every day of their lives--and I dare say there are many who are charitably thinking at this very moment, that my Parson ought not to be playing at whist. All I can say to these rigid disciplinarians is, "Every man has his favorite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!--ladies and gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson, nowadays, as a pattern parson--it is enough to have one pattern in a village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield has bespoken that place--and got the patronage of the stocks for his emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but still at a time when churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they do now. The elderly parson of that day played his rubber as a matter of course, the middle-aged parson was sometimes seen riding to cover (I knew a schoolmaster, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who hunted regularly three times a week during the season), and the young parson would often sing a capital song--not composed by David--and join in those rotary dances, which certainly David never danced before the ark.