I have seen some of
these men attain high position in the world of politics or science,
and yet still retain a look of labyrinth and sizarship.
Unprepossessing then, in feature, gait, and manners, unkempt and
ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described, these poor fellows
formed a class apart, whose thoughts and ways were not as the thoughts
and ways of Ernest and his friends, and it was among them that
Simeonism chiefly flourished.
Destined most of them for the Church (for in those days "holy
orders" were seldom heard of), the Simeonites held themselves to
have received a very loud call to the ministry, and were ready to
pinch themselves for years so as to prepare for it by the necessary
theological courses. To most of them the fact of becoming clergymen
would be the entree into a social position from which they were at
present kept out by barriers they well knew to be impassable;
ordination, therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the
central point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest, something
which he supposed would have to be done some day, but about which,
as about dying, he hoped there was no need to trouble himself as yet.
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