Then Mr. Herbert gets the occasional tonic of a brisk walk over the
hard-beaten snow, of a moonlight winter's night. A walk-only think of
it!--over the crisp, crunching snow, to the distant outlying hamlet of
Paton's Corner, where a few are gathered in the little school-house to
hear him preach, and to give him the happy relief of a five-mile tramp
home again.
It is really doubtful if dumb-bells, a gymnasium, and a pickerel-back
racing-wherry would meet precisely the case of Mr. Herbert, however
desirable for city saints who have plenty of spare sixpences for the
omnibuses.
But the miserable sinner,--"where," as the shepherd exclaimed, to Mr.
Weller's indignation, "is the miserable sinner?" Keeping school,
keeping books, making books, standing behind counters when busy and on
street-corners when disengaged, doing anything or everything but taking
care of his precious body, and thereby giving his precious soul the
chance of being in very bad company, and following the fate of poor
Tray, and of the well-meaning stork in Dr. Aesop's fable. What shall he,
or rather, what can he, do with his leisure? For leisure more or less
almost every young man has,--and it is of young men, and especially of
the _very_ young men, that we are benevolently writing.
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