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But few words had passed
between them, but those were expressive, and they both parted, with
the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.



CHAPTER IX.
HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.


Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him
at Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow
Cooper, he purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the
devils and setting up the true gods? It is scarcely necessary.
Enough to know that, under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved
and bosom friend, William Shakspere, was the first to suffer.
Plays! The one word was enough. Some lying histories were permitted
to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe was
preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's Tale of a Tub escaped,
as it was assumed (there being no time to read any of the books,
and in this respect John Cross showed himself much more of a
professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one
branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic
mechanics in a new country.


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