"
"'Fraid I shan't do much worshipping, church or no church. You see, Mr.
Wilkinson, my business is a very absorbing one. I'll be looking for
notes, and spotting my men, and working up my clues all the time the
parson's bumming away."
"Ah, you have read Tennyson's 'Northern Farmer'?"
"Never heard tell of it; but I've got my eyes on some northern farmers,
and they'll have my attention soon."
"Your expression, 'bumming away,' occurs in it, so I thought you had
found it there. It is rather a severe way in which to characterize the
modern preacher, who, take him on the whole, deserves credit for what I
regard as a difficult task, the presentation of some fresh subject of
religious thought every Sunday all the year round."
"My mind works too fast for most of them. I can see where the conclusion
is before they have half got started. There's no fun in that, you know."
"Do you not sometimes meet with clergymen that interest you?"
"Now and then. The learned bloke who cuts his text into three, and
expounds them in detail, I can't stand; nor the wooden logical machine
that makes a proposition and proceeds to prove it; nor the unctuous
fellow that rambles about, and says, 'dear friends,' and makes you wish
he had studied his sermon.
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