It is the type of the
true and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved
while the firmament cracks and tumbles about him. It is the material
image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye
fixed on the brighter world above.
I did not say all this while we were looking round among these wonders,
quite new to many of us. People don't talk in straight-off sentences
like that. They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a word,
begin again, miss connections of verbs and nouns, and so on, till they
blunder out their meaning. But I did let fall a word or two, showing the
impression the celestial laboratory produced upon me. I rather think I
must own to the "Rock of Ages" comparison. Thereupon the "Man of
Letters," so called, took his pipe from his mouth, and said that he did
n't go in "for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush was played out."
The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely
good sense which one often finds in plain people from the huckleberry
districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he
calls "a tahlented mahn," looked a little puzzled. My remark seemed
natural and harmless enough to him, I suppose, but I had been distinctly
snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend myself, as is
customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one
gentleman accuses another gentleman of mental weakness or obliquity.
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