CHAPTER XXIII. ON DEE-DEEING. “I SEE, husband, that your friend, Mr. Langdon, has been made a D. D." "Yes, poor fellow, I was writing to him a few days ago, and said in a postscript: So you have got the handle to your name. Are you not ashamed ?' I had a letter from him this morning, in which he asks what he has to be ashamed of. I wrote immediately in reply. But the letter has not gone yet. Would you like to hear it ?" Mrs. Oldham said she would. 66 It is in my drawer," said the Doctor, turning to open it. Mrs. Oldham was at the moment putting away some things in her drawer, having drawn it fully out-pulling, of course, the Doctor's drawer under the table out of his reach. 66 Ah, my drawer gone! But take your time, my dear; you wouldn't sleep well if you left any of your knick-knacks out of place or the least awry. I can wait. A good thing this make of our drawers-a good discipline. John Wesley tells us that while he was among the Moravians, his life was so directed by rule, that if he was engaged in writing a letter when the bell struck, he was required to leave off immediately, without stopping to complete an unfinished word. The object of the rule -they told him-was to mortify the lust of finishing.' That is a lust that does not need any mortifying in me, or in Lilly either—unless when she gets hold of a new book of Miss Yonge's, or some other charming story. But it is a lust that is very strong in you, and perhaps I might help to a little salutary mortification of it, by insisting on your shutting your drawer the instant I want to open mine. But then I should lose the chance of exercising my own patience, and might try yours, which needs no trial, besides interfering with your bump of order, which I have a great respect for.” Well, husband, my lust of finishing is not so strong but I can lay aside the most fascinating book, when I have any thing else to do—as I have just done with Adam Bede, in order to write a letter to my mother." "That is true, wife, I am bound to confess, that if your lust of finishing is very strong, your sense of duty is stronger, and I should not need to interfere in any case where duty was concerned." "I have finished now," said she, "and you can have your drawer. So let me hear your letter." "Here it is," said the Doctor, taking it out and beginning to read: 66 MY DEAR LANGDON, "Do you ask what you have to be ashamed of? Why, of being made a D. D., of course. You "You have fallen from an eminence. have dropped out of the select and distinguished circle of the un-dee-deed, into the great titled herd. You have lost an honorable and enviable distinction. 66 Nor this alone; you are now under the necessity of submitting to be impaled on one or the other of the sharp horns of a piercing dilemma. "For know, O my unhappy friend, that in regard to this matter of dee-dee-ness, or state of being dee-deed, or un-dee-deed, there are four possible predicaments. There are: 1. The deservedly, and 3. The deservedly, and 4. The undeservedly S un-dee-deed. dee-deed. "Now, when you were in the un-dee-deed state -fortunate man if you had known your good fortune-no man could reasonably ask you if you were not ashamed. For you belonged either to the first or to the second class. If to the former, it was no cause of shame that you had not a title you did not deserve to have-rather the shame would have been in having it. If to the latter, it was surely no cause for shame to you, whatever it might be to the undiscerning and ill-judging colleges that neglected to adorn your just desert. And either way, whether deservedly or undeservedly un-dee-deed, nobody could, without ridiculous absurdity, ask you if you were not ashamed of being a D. D., when you were not one. One might as well ask if you are not ashamed of being a rhinoceros, when he knows, and you know, and all the world knows you are not a rhinoceros. "Nor, for the same reasons, had you any cause to be ashamed on account of the company you were in-the honorable fraternity of the un-dee-ded; for they, like you, had no cause to blush for themselves. So therefore there was absolutely no ground for the question. "But now you have not only lost the simple manly dignity of an untitled name, and fallen from the select circle of the un-dee-deed, into the great and ever-increasing herd of clerical D. D.'s, likely to be augmented by a host of unclerical D. D.'s, led on by my friend, the clever and eloquent laypreacher just decorated at Cambridge, but, as I said, you are liable to be pierced by one or the other horn of a cruel dilemma. "For, either you are or you are not possessed of the intrinsic and essential quality of true deedee-ness-a profound knowledge of theology, and an aptitude to teach it, withal. If you are, you have reason to be ashamed of the great company of mere titular D. D.'s you have fallen into; and if you are not, you are yourself a mere titular D. D., and have reason to be ashamed of yourself for being a sign without the thing signified-a doctor's doorplate with no doctor within-in short, a pretence and a sham; and so, either way, you have reason for being ashamed. But I am not of the spirit of the man who, in a time of some quite wide-spread disaster, exclaimed: 'Well, wife, thank God our |