文档介绍：Tales and Fantasies
Tales and Fantasies
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Tales and Fantasies
THE MISADVENTURES OF
JOHN NICHOLSON
CHAPTER I - IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE
WIND
JOHN VAREY NICHOLSON was stupid; yet, stupider men than he
are now sprawling in Parliament, and lauding themselves as the authors of
their own distinction. He was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and
inclined to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life; and possibly
this attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond
this hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with
the more ready explanation that he was detested of the gods.
His father - that iron gentleman - had long ago enthroned himself on
the heights of the Disruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of
their grim name they are quite innocent) no array of terms would render
thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but to the Scot they often
prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the milk of
lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their
annual assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the
company of divers red-headed clergymen: these voluble, he only
contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and the austere spectacle of his
stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in
these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary
Establishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little
theological kingdom of Scotland might have listened and gathered literally
nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew this, and
raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom Disruption
Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes; the paper brought him chill
whiffs from it; he had met Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not
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Tales and Fantasies
belong to the Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much
interested by his elucidation of