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Updated: May 12, 2025
Towneley had not argued with him; he had said one word only, and that one of the shortest in the language, but Ernest was in a fit state for inoculation, and the minute particle of virus set about working immediately. Which did he now think was most likely to have taken the juster view of life and things, and whom would it be best to imitate, Towneley or Pryer?
"I heard of an Irish-woman once," he said, with a smile, "who said she was a martyr to the drink." "And so she was," rejoined Pryer with warmth; and he went on to show that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction to other people.
He only talked in much his usual vein about the proposed College, the lamentable want of interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of modern society, and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying that for the present he feared Pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could be done.
I may say here that neither I nor Ernest ever heard of Pryer again, nor have any idea what became of him. This placed me in a difficult position.
He therefore called on Pryer, and spent an hour and more with him. He did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this to Pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull.
"As regards the laity," said Pryer, "nothing; not until we have a discipline which we can enforce with pains and penalties. How can a sheep dog work a flock of sheep unless he can bite occasionally as well as bark? But as regards ourselves we can do much." Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversation, as though he were thinking all the time of something else.
Pryer had often been like this before, but never so nearly, as it seemed to Ernest, coming to a point though what the point was he could not fully understand. His inquietude was communicating itself to Ernest, who would probably ere long have come to know as much as Pryer could tell him, but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a visitor.
Pryer not being at home, he lounged to the British Museum Reading Room, then recently opened, sent for the "Vestiges of Creation," which he had never yet seen, and spent the rest of the afternoon in reading it. Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation with Mr Shaw, but he did so next morning and found him in a good temper, which of late he had rarely been.
We shall never know how it would have ended, for this was the very last time that Ernest ever saw Pryer. Perhaps Pryer was going to break to him some bad news about his speculations.
His eyes wandered curiously over Ernest, as Ernest had often noticed them wander before: the words were about Church discipline, but somehow or other the discipline part of the story had a knack of dropping out after having been again and again emphatically declared to apply to the laity and not to the clergy: once indeed Pryer had pettishly exclaimed: "Oh, bother the College of Spiritual Pathology."
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