" There was Dedication gingerbread, stamped with a moulded
representation of the new temple; there were Dedication syrups,
Dedication pocket-handkerchiefs, also shewing the temple, and in one
corner giving a highly idealised portrait of my father himself. The
chariot and the horses figured largely, and in the confectioners' shops
there were models of the newly discovered relic--made, so my father
thought, with a little heap of cherries or strawberries, smothered in
chocolate. Outside one tailor's shop he saw a flaring advertisement
which can only be translated, "Try our Dedication trousers, price ten
shillings and sixpence."
Presently he passed the new temple, but it was too dark for him to do
more than see that it was a vast fane, and must have cost an untold
amount of money. At every turn he found himself more and more shocked,
as he realised more and more fully the mischief he had already
occasioned, and the certainty that this was small as compared with that
which would grow up hereafter.
"What," he said to me, very coherently and quietly, "was I to do? I had
struck a bargain with that dear fellow, though he knew not what I meant,
to the effect that I should try to undo the harm I had done, by standing
up before the people on Sunday and saying who I was. True, they would
not believe me.
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