Page:Americans and others.djvu/80

 of his soul, should he be struck dead in a "careless mood." We have Mr. Birrell's word for it that once, in an old book about India, he came across an after-dinner jest of Henry Martyn's; but the idea was so incongruous that the startled essayist was disposed to doubt the evidence of his senses. "There must have been a mistake somewhere."

To such a man the world is not, and never can be, a tragi-comedy, and laughter seems forever out of place. When a Madeira negress, a good Christian after her benighted fashion, asked Martyn if the English were ever baptized, he did not think the innocent question funny, he thought it horrible. He found Saint Basil's writings unsatisfactory, as lacking "evangelical truth"; and, could he have heard this great doctor of the Church fling back a witticism in the court of an angry magistrate, he would probably have felt more doubtful than ever concerning the status of the early 66