On a cart outside of the
Park-wall, (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded
spots within the Park itself,) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice
and speedily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose religious
welfare impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome
gesture that his perspiring face is quickly in a stew. His inward flame
conspires with the too fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him,
even in the very exercise of his pious labor; insomuch that he purchases
every atom of spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own
corporeal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, must
finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood,
it is not in scorn; he performs his sacred office more acceptably than
many a prelate. These way-side services attract numbers who would not
otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year's end to
another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors most likely
to be moved by the preacher's eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner,
too,--in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned,
brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a
contemporary of Admiral Benbow,--that tough old mariner may hear a word
or two which will go nearer his heart than anything that the chaplain
of the Hospital can be expected to deliver.
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