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Father Payne - Chapter 51. Of Work
CHAPTER LI. OF WORKI cannot remember now what public man it was who had died of a breakdown from overwork, but I heard Father Payne say, after dinner, referring to the event, "I wish it to be clearly understood that I think a man who dies of deliberate or reckless overwork is a victim of self-indulgence. It is nothing more or less than giving way to a passion. I am as sure as I can be of anything," he went on, "that a thousand years hence that will be recognised by human beings, and that they will feel it to be...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 953
Father Payne - Chapter 50. Of Honour
CHAPTER L. OF HONOUR"No, I couldn't do that," said Lestrange to Barthrop, in one of those unhappy little silences which so often seemed to lie in wait for Lestrange's most platitudinal utterances. "It wouldn't be consistent with a sense of honour." Father Payne gave a chuckle, and Lestrange looked pained, "Oughtn't one to have a code of honour?" he said. "Why, certainly!" said Father Payne, "but you mustn't impose your code on other people. You mustn't take for granted that your idea of honour means the same thing to everyone. Suppose you lost money at cards, and called it a debt...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 2133
Father Payne - Chapter 49. Of Belief
CHAPTER XLIX. OF BELIEF"I don't think there is a single word in the English language," said Father Payne, "which is responsible for such unhappiness as the word 'believe.' It is used with a dozen shades of intensity by people; and yet it is the one word which is always being used in theological argument, and which, like the ungodly, 'is a sword of thine.'" "I always mean the same thing by it, I believe!" I said. "Excuse me," said Father Payne, "but if you will take observations of your talk, you will find you do not. At any rate, _I do...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 1360
Father Payne - Chapter 48. Of Ambiguity
CHAPTER XLVIII. OF AMBIGUITYFather Payne had been listening to some work of mine: and he said at the end, "That is graceful enough, and rather attractive--but it has a great fault: it is sometimes ambiguous. Several of your sentences can have more than one meaning. I remember once at Oxford," he said, smiling, "that Collins, one of our lecturers, had been going through a translation-paper with me, and had told me three quite distinct ways of rendering a sentence, each backed by a great scholar. I asked him, I remember, whether that meant that the original writer--it was Livy, I think--had...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 2570
Father Payne - Chapter 47. Of Respect Of Persons
CHAPTER XLVII. OF RESPECT OF PERSONSFather Payne had been out to luncheon one day with some neighbours. He had groaned over the prospect the day before, and had complained that such goings-on unsettled him. "Well, Father," said Rose at dinner, "so you have got through your ordeal! Was it very bad?" "Bad!" said Father Payne, "why should it be bad? I'm crammed with impressions--I'm a perfect mine of them." "But you didn't like the prospect of going?" said Rose. "No," said Father Payne, "I shrank from the strain--you phlegmatic, aristocratic people,--men-of-the-world, blases, highly-born and highly-placed,--have no conception of the strain these...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 2328
Father Payne - Chapter 46. Of Affection
CHAPTER XLVI. OF AFFECTIONFather Payne, on our walks, invariably stopped and spoke to animals. I will not say that animals were always fond of him, because that is a privilege confined to saints, and heroes of romantic legends. But they generally responded to his advances. It used to amuse me to hear the way he used to talk to animals. He would stop to whistle to a caged bird: "You like your little prison, don't you, sweet?" he would say. Or he would apostrophise a cat, "Well, Ma'am, you must find it wearing to carry on your expeditions all night, and...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 3168
Father Payne - Chapter 45. Of A Change Of Religion
CHAPTER XLV. OF A CHANGE OF RELIGIONI was walking one day with Father Payne; he said to me, "I have been reading Newman's _Apologia over again--I must have read it a dozen times! It is surely one of the most beautiful and singular books in the whole world?--and I think that the strangest sentence in it is this,--'Who would ever dream of making the world his confidant?' Did Newman, do you suppose, not realise that he had done that? And what is stranger still, did he not know that he had told the world, not the trivial things, the little tastes...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 235
Father Payne - Chapter 44. Of Worship
CHAPTER XLIV. OF WORSHIPIt was one of those perfectly fine and radiant days of early summer, with a touch of easterly about the breeze, which means perhaps a drier air, and always seems to bring out the true colours of our countryside, as with a touch of ethereal golden-tinged varnish. The humid rain-washed days, so common in England, are beautiful enough, with their rolling cloud-ranges and their soft mistiness: but the clear sparkle of this brighter weather, summer without its haze, intensifying each tone of colour and sharply defining each several tint, has a special beauty of form as well as...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 646
Father Payne - Chapter 43. Of Critics
CHAPTER XLIII. OF CRITICSI came in from a stroll one day with Father Payne and Barthrop. Father Payne opened a letter which was lying on the hall table, and saying, "Hallo, Leonard, look at this. Gladwin is coming down for Sunday--that will be rather fun!" "I don't know about fun," said Barthrop; "at least I doubt if I should find it fun, if I had the responsibility of entertaining him." "Yes, it's a great responsibility," said Father Payne. "I feel that. Gladwin is a man who has to be taken as you find him, but who never makes any pretence of...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 1417
Father Payne - Chapter 42. Of Religion
CHAPTER XLII. OF RELIGIONI found Father Payne one morning reading a letter with knitted brows. Presently he cast it down on the table with a gesture of annoyance. "What a fool one is to argue!" he said--and then stopping, he said, "But you wanted something--what is it?" It was a question about some books which was soon answered. Then he said: "Stay a few minutes, won't you, unless you are pressed? I have got a tiresome letter, and if you will let me pour out my complaint to you, I shall be all right--otherwise I shall go about grumbling and muttering...
Essays - Post by : lotherin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Arthur C. Benson - Read : 476