I
should be delighted to see you following in his steps. I shall be most
glad to be of service to you. Our meetings for Bible instruction are on
Wednesdays, at seven: the young men upon the left, the young ladies on
the right."
The Doctor appeared to Reuben a man solemnly preoccupied with the
immensity of his charge; and it seemed to him (though it was doubtless a
wicked thought of the boy) that the ponderous minister would have
counted it a matter of far smaller merit to instruct, and guide, and
save a wanderer from the country, than to perform the same offices for a
good fat sinner of the city.
As we have said, the memory of old teachings for a year or more made any
divergence from the severe path of boyhood seem to Reuben a sin; and
these divergencies so multiplied by easy accessions as to have made him,
after a time, look upon himself very confidently, and almost cheerily,
as a reprobate. And if a reprobate, why not taste the Devil's cup to the
full?
That first visit to the theatre was like a bold push into the very
domain of Satan. Even the ticket-seller at the door seemed to him on
that eventful night an understrapper of Beelzebub, who looked out at him
with the goggle eyes of a demon.
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