Читать книгу Chelsea, in the Olden & Present Times - George Sands Bryan - Страница 11

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The next event is one of unusual interest. The statement may be relied upon as authentic, and the circumstance of its not having gained publicity has been owing to the few persons who witnessed it and the secrecy enjoined, but after nearly sixty years have elapsed, and the individuals concerned being long since deceased, the particulars may now be fairly disclosed without any breach of confidence.

A short time after the conclusion of Divine Service, on a Sunday morning, a gentleman alighted from a carriage and proceeded to the Vestry Room, where two others were waiting his arrival. As soon as the congregation had dispersed, the parties, with two or three parochial officers, &c., went to the entrance of the middle aisle, and the inner door being closed, the person especially referred to hurriedly knelt down. A paper was then placed in his hand, which was a recantation of certain opprobrious epithets that he had applied to a lady in one of the streets in the parish, stigmatizing her publicly by a term which the reader can easily supply. When he recited the offensive words he laid particular emphasis on them, evidently in a spirit of bravado and not of contrition. Penance and penitence were not in any way, apparently, considered by him as synonymous terms. There is scarcely an individual who would suppose that such an event occurred, at so comparatively recent a period as sixty years ago, in the old Parish Church of St. Luke, Chelsea.