At the entrance of the master of the house, there was some such decorous
silence as that which is known to precede the communications of the
aborigines. At length Ensign Dudley, in whom matter, most probably in
consequence of its bulk, bore more than an usual proportion to his less
material part, manifested some evidences of impatience that the divine
should proceed to business. Thus admonished, or possibly conceiving that a
sufficient concession had been made to the dignity of man's nature, Meek
opened his mouth to speak.
"Captain Content Heathcote," he commenced, with that mystical involution
of his subject which practice had rendered nearly inseparable from all his
communications; "Captain Content Heathcote, this hath been a day of awful
visitations, and of gracious temporal gifts. The heathen hath been smitten
severely by the hand of the believer, and the believer hath been made to
pay the penalty of his want of faith, by the infliction of a savage
agency. Azazel hath been loosened in our village, the legions of
wickedness have been suffered to go at large in our fields, and yet the
Lord hath remembered his people, and hath borne them through a trial of
blood as perilous as was the passage of his chosen nation through the
billows of the Red Sea.
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