I had not brought a
pilgrim's staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without
one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood
to be so denominated. For a moment I considered it absurd that I should
need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence. Then a new
idea flashed across me. I was not going there: we were journeying to
hear the famous Jabez Branderham preach, from the text--'Seventy Times
Seven;' and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the 'First of
the Seventy-First,' and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated.

We came to the chapel. I have passed it really in my walks, twice or
thrice; it lies in a hollow, between two hills: an elevated hollow, near
a swamp, whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of
embalming on the few corpses deposited there. The roof has been kept
whole hitherto; but as the clergyman's stipend is only twenty pounds per
annum, and a house with two rooms, threatening speedily to determine into
one, no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor: especially as it
is currently reported that his flock would rather let him starve than
increase the living by one penny from their own pockets. However, in my
dream, Jabez had a full and attentive congregation; and he preached--good
God! what a sermon; divided into _four hundred and ninety_ parts, each
fully equal to an ordinary address from the pulpit, and each discussing a
separate sin! Where he searched for them, I cannot tell. He had his
private manner of interpreting the phrase, and it seemed necessary the
brother should sin different sins on every occasion. They were of the
most curious character: odd transgressions that I never imagined
previously.

Oh, how weary I grow. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and
revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood
up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would _ever_
have done. I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the
'_First of the Seventy-First_.' At that crisis, a sudden inspiration
descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce Jabez Branderham as the
sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon.

'Sir,' I exclaimed, 'sitting here within these four walls, at one
stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of
your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and
been about to depa