The Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a severe reprimand in
the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he could make was
that he was preaching ex tempore, had not thought of this particular
point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then been carried
away by it.
Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the
hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give
promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn. Next day he received a
letter from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to
him that this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its
fruit first and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no
flower is perceptible to an ordinary observer. This last, however, was
an accident which might have happened to anyone but a scientist or
an inspired writer.
The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very young- not
yet four-and-twenty-and that in mind as in body, like most of those
who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower.
By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an
attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes
out altogether.
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