Some members of the community may he properly called “creepers,” for they very much resemble the ivy. They have neither backbone nor principle. Their object is to creep into religious communities and social societies, so as to entwine themselves round the members. They harbour filth, impede growth, hide beauty, and climb by the strength they steal from others.
A church whose members are tipsters may be compared to a marsh with too much water at the roots, bringing forth rushes, sedges, and buttercups.
Upon the tail of a snail a farmer’s weather glass is to be seen; so in like manner the footsteps of an enemy will reveal to an observing mind the dangers to be avoided.
Some Christian ministers are like the gas stove, warm-looking in the pulpit, but cold at home.
A man with all sorts of wrong ideas, crotchets, and queer notions in his head exhibits himself as a marsh with spots of green grass and daisies, to get at which mud and quagmire will have to be faced and got through before they are reached, and when this has been done the trouble will have been wasted.
Selfish men and misers engaged in grubbing after mammon may be compared to a swarm of flies feeding upon a dung-heap; and so long as the sun of prosperity shines they can feed, buzz, annoy, and sting.
A man who kisses his wife to hide his sins is sowing seeds that will produce a crop of anguish and despair that will hang heavier round his neck than a millstone. A kissing deceiver is the devil’s major-general.
Every time a man or woman does a deceitful action they make and deposit a grain of gunpowder, that only requires the light of public opinion and truth to send the maker, according to the number of grains deposited, into eternity to reap his folly.
Hungry-bellied politicians, whose object is to sting in order to feed, are the gadflies of English society, settling upon John Bull to fill their pockets and rob for fame.
Paupers and lawyers are leeches which fasten upon social life, often sucking the blood of those who are the least able to stand them.
A wife who cooks her husband’s meals five minutes behind time is carving furrows upon his forehead.
A mother who sends her children unwashed to school is embedding in the child’s nature seeds that will one day bring a crop of poverty, wretchedness, and despair.