I ought to have come sooner
to see him, and then I could have had a chance to go again and talk
soberly and kindly with him, and show him gently how much he had
mistaken himself. Oh, _get_ up!" By this time the mare had
lapsed again into her habitual absent-mindedness, and was limping
along the dark road with a tendency to come to a full stop, from
step to step. The remorse in the minister's soul was so keen that he
could not use her with the cruelty necessary to rouse her flagging
energies; as he held the reins he flapped his elbows up toward his
face, as if they were wings, and contrived to beat away a few of the
mosquitoes with them; Mrs. Sewell, in silent exasperation, fought
them from her with the bough which she had torn from an overhanging
birch-tree.
In the morning they returned to Boston, and Sewell's parish duties
began again; he was rather faithfuller and busier in these than he
might have been if he had not laid so much stress upon duties of all
sorts, and so little upon beliefs. He declared that he envied the
ministers of the good old times who had only to teach their people
that they would be lost if they did not do right; it was much
simpler than to make them understand that they were often to be good
for reasons not immediately connected with their present or future
comfort, and that they could not confidently expect to be lost for
any given transgression, or even to be lost at all.
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