What punishment is for such
beloved, Love himself only knows. It must be in store for them somewhere.
Dimly one can suspect what it might be; but it will be like all Love's
true secrets,--secret for ever.
These men of hysteria also take up specialties of art or science; and in
their behoof rant, and exaggerate, and fabricate, and twist, and lie in
such stentorian voices that reasonable people are deafened and bewildered.
They also tell common tales in such enormous phrases, with such gigantic
structure of rhetorical flourish, that the mere disproportion amounts to
false-hood; and, the diseased appetite in listeners growing more and more
diseased, feeding on such diseased food, it is impossible to predict what
it will not be necessary for story-mongers to invent at the end of a
century or so more of this.
But the worst manifestations of this disease are found in so-called
religious writing. Theology, biography, especially autobiography, didactic
essays, tales with a moral,--under every one of these titles it lifts up
its hateful head.
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