erved,
took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming
mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he
became a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourished
like his. 'Nothing of news,' says his biographer in another place,
'nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration or talk of alteration could
at any time be set on foot in the town but be sure Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
would be at the head or tail of it. But, to be sure, he would always
decline those he deemed to be the weakest, and stood always with those,
in his way of thinking, that he supposed were the strongest side.' He
was a man, it was often remarked, of but one book also. Sunday and
Saturday he was to be found deep in _The Architect of Fortune_; _or_,
_Advancement in Life_, a book written by its author so as to 'come home
to all men's business and bosoms.' He drove over scrupulously once a
Sunday to the State church, of which he was one of the most determined
pillars. He had set his mind on being Lord Mayor of the town before
long, and he was determined that his eldest son should be called Sir
Worldly-Wiseman after him, and he chose his church accordingly. Another
of his biographers in this connection wrote of him thus: 'Our Lord Mayor
parted his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and he went to
church not to serve God, but to please the king. The face of the law
made him wear the mask of the Gospel, which he used not as a means to
save his soul, but his charges.' Such, in a short word, was this
'sottish man' who crossed over the field to meet with our pilgrim when he
was walking solitary by himself after his escape from the slough.

'How now, good fellow? Whither away after this burdened manner?' What a
contrast those two men were to one another in the midst of that plain
that day! Our pilgrim was full of the most laborious going; sighs and
groans rose out of his heart at every step; and then his burden on his
back, and his filthy, slimy rags all made him a picture such that it was
to any man's credit and praise that he should stop to speak to him. And
then, when our pilgrim looked up, he saw a gentleman standing beside him
to whom he was ashamed to speak. For the gentleman had no burden on his
back, and he did not go over the plain laboriously. There was not a spot
or a speck, a rent or a wrinkle on all his fine raiment. He could not
have been better appointed if he had j