One morning I
recall, when my poor father lay a-bed of the gout and there came a roar
through London streets as of a burst ocean dike. Before Tibbie could
say no, I had snatched up a cap and was off.
God spare me another such sight! In all my wild wanderings have I
never seen savages do worse.
Through the streets of London before the shoutings of a rabble rout was
whipped an old, white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in
the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the head
of a regicide--all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlessly
erect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you what
they did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentence
meant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! All
the while, watching from a window were the princes and their shameless
ones.
Ah, yes! God wot, I understood Eli Kirke's bitterness!
But the beginning was not auspicious, and my best intentions presaged
worse. For instance, one morning my uncle was sounding my
convictions--he was ever sounding other people's convictions--"touching
the divine right of kings." Thinking to give strength to contempt for
that doctrine, I applied to it one forcible word I had oft heard used
by gentlemen of the cloth.
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