On the other hand, his sceptical opponents were
almost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the great remains of
antiquity, and would probably have considered the machinery of the
Prometheus Bound or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer.
That they should spend their time in picking the Bible to pieces when
there was so much positive work for them to do, seemed to me as
melancholy as if they had spent themselves upon theology. To waste a
Sunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of Jonah was surely
as imbecile as to waste it in proving their verbal veracity.
CHAPTER II--M'KAY
It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street. The
churches and chapels were emptying themselves, but the great mass of
the population had been "nowhere." I had dinner with M'Kay, and as
the day wore on the fog thickened. London on a dark Sunday
afternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is depressing. The
inhabitants drag themselves hither and thither in languor and
uncertainty. Small mobs loiter at the doors of the gin palaces.
Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling "walnuts" with a cry so
melancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may be
imagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by the
monotony of a million years.
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