The Damnation of Theron Ware

"but at the last minute I backed out. I daresay I shall pluck up the courage, sooner or later, and really go. It must be fully twenty years since I last heard a sermon, and I

, Theron felt himself flushing with satisfaction. H

ather Forbes say that he d

There is no point in his going to all that pains, merely to incur that risk. Nobody wants him to preach, and he has reached an age where personal vanity no longer tempts him to do so. What IS wanted of him is that he should be the paternal, ceremonial, author

ely curious to me," said Theron.

know what you were going to say. It struck you as odd that he shoul

y-my parishioners wouldn't have taken it so q

tant element in the machinery here. Coming to take the pledge implies that you have been drunk and are now ashamed. Both states have their values, but they are opposed. Sitting on that bench tends to develop penitence to the prejudice of alcoholism. But at no stage would it

t as bad as all that, he wouldn't come near the church at

s remaining in would injure the church, and that in turn involves the idea that it is the excellent character of the parishioners which imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics' conception, you see, is quite the converse. Such virtue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have a right here, the pr

f the case, but this did not seem a specially fit time for bringing them forth. There was indeed a sense of languid repletion in his mind, as if it had b

r a minute with an air of deep meditation, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series of smoke-rings. Thero

of the mellowed light, the perfumed opalescence of the air, the luxury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a sweeping curve of beauty, into a firm, calm, severe melody, delicious to the ear, but as cold in the mind'

brain, that he was listening to organ-music, and that it came through the open window from the church close by. He would fain have reclined in his chair and

ut faint little bars of party-colored radiance upon the blackness of the deep passage-way. He could vaguely trace by these the outlines of some sort of picture on the window. There were human figures in it, and-yes-up here in the centre, nearest him, was a woman's head. There was a halo about it, eng

ice say by his side. Dr. Ledsmar had followed h

on the stained glass. He saw now in a flash the resemblance

with a hostile note in his voice. "Whenever I am dining here, s

ying," remarked Theron. "I thought you

s. The music had sunk away now into fragmentary and unconnected passages, broken here and there by abrupt stops. Dr. Ledsmar stretche

se which began to affect him as constrained, "but something you s

a devil's advocate on the premises. No, Mr. Ware, I don't live here. I inhabit a house of my own-you may have seen it-an old-fashioned place up beyond the race-course, with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden. But I dine here three or four times a we

ut enthusiasm. The thought of the docto

ozen years," he remarked, frankly willing that the young minister should appreciate the favor extended him. "It

quite alone,"

erest Octavius a great deal when I first brought him here, ten years ago or so. He afforded occupation for all the idle boys in the village for a twelve-month at least. They used to lie in wait for him all day long, with stones or horse-chestnuts or snowballs, accordin

med to be shaking the very walls. It was something with a big-lunged, exultant, triumphing swing in it-something which ought to have been sung on the battlefield at the close of day by the wh

ch for music," suggested M

ot of the reptilian creation-the very lowest types of the vertebrata now in existence? I insist upon the parallel among humans. I have in my time, sir, had considerable opportunities for studying close at hand the various orders of mammalia w

ains which rolled in through the vibrating brickwork, and to picture to himself the large, capable figure of Miss Madden seated in the half-light at the organ-bo

me when the Egyptians, when the Assyrians, and other Semites, were running to artistic riot. Every great museum in the world now has whole floors devoted to statues from the Nile, and marvellous carvings from the palaces of Sargon and Assurbanipal. You can get the artistic remains of the Jews during that whole period into a child's wheelbarrow. They had the sense and strength to penalize art; they alone survived. They saw the Egyptians go, the As

a cheery voice. Father Forbes had entered the room, and stood looking dow

he collapse of the New Jerusalem. I fancied I had given him time enough to bring you straight up to the end of all of us, with that Ch

It had become suddenly apparent to him that he desired nothing so much as to ma

forth to restrain him, he presently made his way out, Father Forbes hospitably fol

lief and rest after some undue fatigue. It crossed his mind that drunken men probably felt like that as they leaned against things on their way home. He was affected himself, he saw, by the weariness and half-na

int rhythm of sound as he sauntered along. He discovered, as he neared the light, that he was instinctively stepping over the seams in the flagstone sidewalk as he had done as a boy. He smiled again at this. There was something exceptionally juvenile and buoyant about his mood, now that he examined it. He set it down as a reaction fro

noted, almost at the end of the edifice, a small door-the entrance to a porch coming out to the sidewa

again with that same curious, intimate, personal relation which had so moved him at the s

r at least pious, effect in it now. He fancied that it must be secular music, or, if not, then something adapted to marriage ceremonies-rich, vivid, passionate, a celebrati

making upon him. Then, all at once, he wheeled and stepped boldly into the porch, pushing th

n inside a Catho