MR. BLAKE was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak,He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking aglass of grog on a Sunday after dinner,
And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or - ifGood Friday or Christmas Day happened to come in it - threetimes a week.
He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dressesThat the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray,And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap'sdistresses,
He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, hole-and-corner sort of way.
I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics,When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject ofthe proper width of a chasuble's hem;
I have even known him to sneer at albs - and as for dalmatics,Words can't convey an idea of the contempt he expressed forTHEM.
He didn't believe in persons who, not being well offthemselves, are obliged to confine their charitable exertionsto collecting money from wealthier people,And looked upon individuals of the former class asecclesiastical hawks;
He used to say that he would no more think of interfering withhis priest's robes than with his church or his steeple,And that he did not consider his soul imperilled becausesomebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose todress himself up like an exaggerated GUY FAWKES.
This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shamelessThat he actually went a-courting a very respectable and piousmiddle-aged sister, by the name of BIGGS.
She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such hadalways been particularly blameless;
Her first husband had left her a secure but moderatecompetence, owing to some fortunate speculations in the matterof figs.
She was an excellent person in every way - and won the respecteven of MRS. GRUNDY,
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted apenny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance ofSunday,
And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she tookall the bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts andcandle-ends (when she had quite done with them), and made theminto an excellent soup for the deserving poor.
I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE - that outcastof society,
And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began tolook dubious and to cough,
She would say, "Oh, my friends, it's because I hope to bringthis poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, wasuncommonly well off.
And when MR. BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attentionto the frown or the pout of her,
Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of anunmentionable place,
He would say that "she would be a very decent old girl whenall that nonsense was knocked out of her,"And his method of knocking it out of her is one that coveredhim with disgrace.
She was fond of going to church services four times everySunday, and, four or five times in the week, and never seemedto pall of them,
So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distancethat had services at different hours, so to speak;And when he had married her he positively insisted upon theirgoing to all of them,
So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday,and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in thecourse of the week.
She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously intothe plate, and she liked to see them stand out ratherconspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns andshillings,
So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by anyextraordinary chance there wasn't a charity sermon anywhere,he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one for him and one forher) into the poor-box at the door;
And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity fromthe housekeeping money, and the money he allowed her for herbonnets and frillings,
She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it tointerfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerablebore.
On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but goodsociety,
For that day in her household was a day of sighings andsobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads:
She wouldn't hear of a button being sewn on a glove, becauseit was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves,or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlourdinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.
But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that peopleshould do their own works of necessity, and not delegate themto persons in a menial situation,
So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as even answera bell.
Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath tothe second floor, much against her inclination, -And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates theseballads has put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.
After about three months of this sort of thing, taking thesmooth with the rough of it,
(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was nother notion of connubial bliss),
MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enoughof it,
And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE'S ownoriginal line of conduct wasn't so much amiss.
And now that wicked person - that detestable sinner ("BELIALBLAKE" his friends and well-wishers call him for hisatrocities),
And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothersdislike and pity so,
Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoonand occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings inconnubial fondlings and affectionate reciprocities,And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, outof it) they expect to go!
