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When I left home poor Tolly was really becoming embittered against the world and was absorbing himself in putting up a new telephone line over to Spring Hill. I told Peter how he ought to appreciate Tolly for leaving business in that state to come up for the first night of the play; and Peter said: "Dear old chap; we must find the shibboleth that will unleash the hooded falcon of his soul."
The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches.
We sat wedged between a Georgian in smelly, greasy woolen jacket, and a man who looked Persian but talked for the most part French. There were other Persians beyond him, for I caught the word poul money, the perennial song and shibboleth of that folk.
But this man talked the shibboleth of his craft over one's head to other members of his clique with a defiance of good manners arising more from conceit than from ignorance of the ways of society; and with a transparent intention of being overheard and admired which reminded me of the little self-conscious conceits of children before visitors.
Patriotism, which Doctor Johnson, beefeater-in-ordinary, said is the last refuge of a rogue, is usually nothing but hatred of other countries, very much as we are told that the shibboleth of Harvard is, "To hell with Yale." Puritanism is a reactionary move, a swinging out of the pendulum away from idleness, gluttony, sham, pretense and hypocrisy. Charles the First was king.
Was there no escape from the madness of the mart, no surcease from the frenzy of the factory or the shibboleth of the shop! "Yes! How well I recall the gay transformation in my shop-mates when the whistle blew on Saturday night. The dullest and most morose showed intelligence then. The prospect of rest, be it ever so remote even in the hereafter roused them from their lethargy.
At the last moment it occurred to me to try upon him the shibboleth which in Father Cotton's mouth had so mystified me. "This fire burns brightly," I said, kicking the logs together with my riding-boot. "It must be of boxwood." "Of what, sir?" quoth he, politely. "Of boxwood, to be sure," I replied, in a louder tone. "My certes!" he exclaimed. "They do not burn boxwood in this country.
I myself remarked three of them; devout they seemed and yet vigilant as was natural, for they had come to both watch and pray. The psalms were too much for them; they seemed to enter heartily into the other portions of the service but the psalms in metre are a great Shibboleth.
I pushed my way through a group of enthusiastic patriots many of them in that condition once described to me by a sporting curate as "holding two or three firkins apiece" who crowded round me, fired with a desire to drink success to the British Constitution a rash shibboleth, by the way, for gentlemen in their situation to attempt to enunciate at all at my expense, and hastened upstairs to our wing.
The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and officials who influence their votes are paid for incorporating all principles in the shibboleth of that single name. You have thus sought the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular ignorance.
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