The family of the Spintexts have, it appears, very lately put forth a
_scion_, in the person of a learned divine, a Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, who, being appointed a _Select Preacher_ in 1835,
delivered a discourse of the extraordinary duration of an _hour and a
half_! The present Father of the University and Master of Peter-house,
Dr. Francis Barnes, upwards of ninety years of age, was one of the
heads present. He sat out the first three quarters of an hour, but
then began to be _fidgetty_. Another quarter of an hour expired,--the
preacher was still in the _midst_ of his discourse. The Doctor (now
become right down impatient,) being seated the lowest (next to the
Vice-Chancellor) in _Golgotha_, or the "Place of Skulls," as it is
called, he moved, first one seat higher (the preacher is still on his
legs,) then to a third, then to a fourth, then to a fifth; and before
the hour and a half had quite expired, he joined one of the junior
esquire bedells at the top, to whom he observed, with that original
expression of face for which he is so remarkable, "my beef is burnt to
a cinder."
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