When he stood up his brain reeled, he was
speechless, and stood aghast, unutterable amazement stamped upon his
face. In the tone of a Jeremiah he at length gasped out, "Well, sir,
what a sight to have seen: but one I never care to see again! How awful!
I tremble to think of it! I don't know what to compare it to, unless it
be to a messenger despatched from the infernal regions with a commission
to spread desolation and destruction over the fair land. How much longer
shall knowledge be allowed to go on increasing?"
The rector taught the clerk how to play chess, to which game he took
eagerly, and taught it to the village youths. They played it on
half-holidays in winter and became engrossed in it, manufacturing
chess-boards out of old book-covers and carving very creditable chessmen
out of bits of wood. When he was playing with his rector one evening he
lost his queen and at once resigned, saying, "I consider, reverend sir,
that chess without a queen is like life without a female."
Hinton knew not a word of Latin, but he had a pedantic pleasure in
introducing it whenever he could. Genders were ever a mystery to him,
though with the help of a dictionary he would often substitute a Latin
for an English word. Thus he used the signatures "Gulielmus
Hintoniensis, Rusticus Sacrista," and when writing to Mrs.
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