Mr. M'Sneeshing. To have just as much--and _nae mair!_--as will keep body and soul together! Would you not _revile_, rather than _relieve_, the lazy and the improvident?
Mr. Bosky. Not if they were hungry and poor!
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Nor cast them a single word of reproach?
* "In the daily eating this was his custom. (Archbishop Parker's, temp. Elizabeth.) The steward, with the servants that were gentleman of the better rank, sat down at the tables in the hall on the right hand; and the almoner, with the clergy, &e., sat on the other side, where there was plenty of all sorts of provision. The daily fragments thereof did suffice to fill the bellies of a great number of poor hungry people that waited at the gate. And moreover it was the Archbishop's command to his servants, that all strangers should be receive and treated with all manner of civility and respect."
The poor and hungry fed and treated with "civility and respect!" What a poser and pill for Geordie M'Sneeshing and Professor M'Grab!
Mr. Bosky. I would see that they were fed first, and then, if I reproved, my reproof should be no pharisaical diatribes. The bitterest reproaches fall short of that pain which a wounded spirit suffers in reflecting on its own errors; a lash given to the soul will provoke more than the body's most cruel torture.
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Vera romantic, and in the true speerit of----
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Chay-ri-ty? (putting his hand into his coat-pocket.)
Mr. Bosky. Don't fumble; the word is not in M'Culloch!
Mr. M'Sneeshing. Peradventure, Mr Bosky, you would build a Union poor-house (sarcastically).
Mr. M'Sneeshing. An Hospital? (with a sardonic grin!)
Mr. Bosky. In the _Human Heart!_ You may not know of such a place, Mr. M'Sneeshing. Your hospital would be where some countrymen of yours build castles, in Sky and Ayr!
And the Lauréat abruptly quitted the room, leaving Mr. M'Sneeshing in that embarrassing predicament, "_Between the de'il and the deep sea!_"
But his mission was soon apparent. "Three cheers for the kind young gentleman!" resounded from the holiday folks, and a broadside of blessings from the veteran tar! This obfuscated concholo-gist Geordie, and he was about to launch a _Brutum fulmen_, a speech _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, as the magging mouthpiece of Professor