The Argosy — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Tae Ameer.) The Knight of the Trowel. 129 oratorical orations, accompanied by much gesture and grimace, and other elocutionary airs and graces unknown to all orators save Robin himself. Often, when his work for the day was done, and presuming on his privi- leged condition, he came to warm and rest him amongst the servants in the kitchen, the spirit of preaching would come mightily upon him, and, seizing his chair and converting it into an impromptu pulpit, he would deliver himself of what he was pleased to designate “ a strong compound of doctrine,” exhorting his rural hearers to alter their ways and be wise, to improve what gifts they had, and not to hide their fadons in the earth, like the unjust servant, who met with a proper reward for his doings. Not unfrequently he numbered us, an amused and unseen auditor, amongst his attentive hearers, as, stationed in the back passage or pantry, we listened in the spirit of the rest, we fear, which was more to catch his eccentric ideas, grotesque gesticulations, and oufré expressions, than for the hope of any spiritual benefit to be derived from his rough, wandering, and often incoherent declamations. Next to preaching himself, Robin dearly loved preachers and preach- ings, and, in search of a man to his mind, had visited in succession all the Church of England and Presbyterian places of worship in the neigh- bourhood. To two of the latter he most inclined, on account of their near proximity to himself and to each other. The one he designated the Big House, and the other the Little House. The congregation of the latter was a top swarm from the former, founded at a time when its Capacious progenitor had of hearers enough and to spare; but that was at a time prior to the famine, and before the tide of emigration, which has since thinned so many households as well as churches, had set in in full force. By reason of its priority, respectability, and influence, as well as early associations, Robin lent the light of his countenance to the Big House. Its minister he considered to, be a truly good man—a doer of good deeds and a speaker of good words; but whether it was his manner of deliver- ing the “good words,” or Robin’s manner of receiving them, he could not take up what the other laid down: in other words, as he was wont to explain, he “ couldn’t catch it.” Now, in the hope of “catching it,” he left the Big House and went over to the Little one, where he found a man, tall and comely, of a pleasant aspect, fair complexioned, and fair spoken. But his utterances were too rapid for Robin’s comprehension ; he poured out his sentences in ‘a tumultuous quantity of words,” which Robin further hkened to the “ pouring of gravel out of a cart.” Still unable to catch #7, Robin moved down under the ministry of another clergyman—a man but a little less odd than Robin himself, and looked upon in his parts as a downright curiosity. Under his preaching Robin sat for some time on Sundays, and on his premises he worked through the week. The clergyman was reputed rich; he had a hand- GOHRMGIOO <S GO)