"Dear Tom--
"Received your last letter by the Baltic. It was a gem, as usual.
If your book is half as good, you will make your reputation and a
fortune out of it. I knew you would like Paris; it is the only
place in the world to live in. I hope yet to end my days there.
"And speaking of ending days, I have the most extraordinary thing
to tell you:
"Jack--our glorious dare-devil Jack--has turned parson! Actual
parson--black coat, white neck-tie, and long-tailed surtout--it is
incredible! The little opera-dancer, Felissitimi, laughed till she
was black in the face when I told her. It is no laughing matter to
me, though, for he was always my shadow. I miss him at the club,
the billiard-table, at King street, and every where else. It is
confoundedly provoking. I feel like half a pair of scissors, and
wander round in a most unriveted state.
"Such crowds as Jack draws to hear him! There is no church in town
that will hold all his admiring listeners. _I_ have not been, from
principle, because I think all that sort of thing is a deuced
humbug, and I won't countenance it. But the other night, Menia did
not perform, as was announced on the play-bills, and I looked about
quite at a loss where to spend my evening. The first thing I knew,
I found myself borne along with the current toward John's church.
Then I said to myself 'Now if that crowd choose to relieve me of
the responsibility of countenancing John's nonsense, by _pushing_
me into that church, well and good;' so I just resigned myself to
the elbowing tide. And, by Jove! the first thing I knew, there I
was, in a broad aisle-pew, sitting down as demure as if I were
Aminidab Sleek.
"Well, pretty soon John came in. How well he had got himself up in
that black suit! It was miraculous. I looked round on the
women--_he_ had them! With that musical voice of his, even that old
hymn he read, sounded as well as any thing of Byron's. His prayer
was miraculous!--I can't think how he did it; one would have
supposed he felt every syllable; but you and I know Jack.
"Well, then came the sermon. 'Cast thy bread upon the waters, for
thou shalt find it after many days.' He said it was in the Bible,
and I suppose it was; I never heard of it before, but that may be
for want of reading. By that time I was all eyes and ears. I knew
he had impudence enough, so I was not afraid of his breaking down;
and if he did, so much the better; there'd be something to laugh
at him about.
"Now, Tom, you can't credit what I am going to tell you; that
fellow began to relate his own experience; beginning with the
prayers and hymns his mother taught him, and which he gradually
lost the recollection of after she died, and as he grew older; then
he described--and, by Jove, he did it well--his past downward
steps, as he called them (I think that expression is open to
discussion, Tom), the temptations of his youth, the gradual searing
of conscience, and Satan's final triumph, when he cast off all
restraint, and acknowledged no law but the domination of his own
mad passions. Then he described his life at that point, _our_
life--(I wonder if he saw _me_ there?) he spoke of the occasional
twinges of conscience, growing fainter, fainter, and at last dying
out altogether.
"Then came his waking up from that long trance of sin, our meeting
with that old lady in the street--(you remember, Tom), and the
tearful look which she bent on him, when in reply to some remark of
mine, he exclaimed,
"'Jesus Christ!'
"Then, how that look had haunted him, tortured him, by day and
night; how it had wakened to new life all the buried memories of
childhood--his mother's prayers and tears, and dying words; and
how, after wrestling with it, through deeper depths of sin than
any into which he had yet plunged, he had yielded to the holy
spell, and that 'Jesus Christ' had now become to him, with
penitential utterance, 'My Lord and my God.'
"Tom--there was not a dry eye in that church when Jack got through,
no--not even mine, for I caught the infection (I might as well own
it); I felt as wicked as old King Herod; and all day to-day--it is
a rainy day, though, and I suppose, when the sun shines out, I
shall feel better, I have not been able to get that sermon out of
my mind. I don't believe in it, of course not; hang me if I know
what _does_ ail me; I am inclined to think it is a bad fit of
indigestion. I must have a game at billiards. Write me.
"Yours,
"FINELS."