hem,
as of a cat watching caged birds. One famous gesture was irresistible,
and he never employed it but some poor ruffian fell senseless to the
floor. His stumpy fingers would fix a noose of air round some imagined
neck, and so devoutly was the pantomime studied that you almost heard
the creak of the retreating cart as the phantom culprit was turned off.
But his conduct in the pulpit was due to no ferocity of temperament. He
merely exercised his legitimate craft. So long as Newgate supplied him
with an enforced audience, so long would he thunder and bluster at the
wrongdoer according to law and the dictates of his conscience.

Many, in truth, were his triumphs, but, as he would mutter in his
garrulous old age, never was he so successful as in the last exhortation
delivered to Matthias Brinsden. Now, Matthias Brinsden incontinently
murdered his wife because she harboured too eager a love of the
brandy-shop. A model husband, he had spared no pains in her correction.
He had flogged her without mercy and without result. His one design
was to make his wife obey him, which, as the Scriptures say, all
wives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, and
Brinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in her
skull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias rose
yet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then was
Thomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant's
condemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors the
moving discourse which here follows:

'We shall take our text,' gruffed the Ordinary 'From out the Psalms:
"Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days."
And firstly, we shall expound to you the heinous sin of murder, which is
unlawful (1) according to the Natural Laws, (2) according to the Jewish
Law, (3) according to the Christian Law, proportionably stronger. By
Nature 'tis unlawful as 'tis injuring Society: as 'tis robbing God
of what is His Right and Property; as 'tis depriving the Slain of the
satisfaction of Eating, Drinking, Talking, and the Light of the Sun,
which it is his right to enjoy. And especially 'tis unlawful, as it
is sending a Soul naked and unprepared to appear before a wrathful and
avenging Deity without time to make his Soul composedly or to listen to
the thoughtful ministrations of one (like ourselves) soundly versed in
Divinity. By the Jewish Law 'tis forbidden, for is it no