My Neighbors | Page 7

not in the pulpit."
"Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand
he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I."
Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's
shoutings to God. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who
were outside his room.
"Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys
Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my
courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons."
He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of
the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were
more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the
heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against
ungodly book-prayers and short sermons.

Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety--which was an
adage--was above that of any student. Of him this was said: "'White
Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.'"
Brightness fell upon him. He had a name for the tearfulness and
splendor of his eloquence. He could conduct himself fancifully: now he
was Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son
longing to eat at the pigs' trough, now he was the Widow of Nain
rejoicing at the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh
squirming under the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or
longed, rejoiced or squirmed. Congregations sought him to preach in
their pulpits, and he chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging
the richest men for his wage and the cost of his entertainment and
journey. But Ben would rule over no chapel. "I wait for the call from
above," he said.
His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol. His father met
him in a doleful manner.
"An old boy very cruel is the Parson," Abel whined. "Has he not
strained Gwen for his tithes? Auction her he did and bought her himself
for three pounds and half a pound."
Ben answered: "Go now and say the next Saturday Benshamin Lloyd
will give mouthings on tithes in Capel Dissenters."
Ben stood in the pulpit, and spoke to the people of Capel Dissenters.
"How many of you have been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male
bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black
muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But
there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon
got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you
will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach
y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me
that. From where does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of
Satan. The only thing he had to leave, and he left her to his friends the
parsons. Iss-iss, earnest affair is this. Who gives him his food? We.

Who pays for Vicarage? We. Who feeds his pony? We. His cows? We.
Who built his church? We. With stones carted from our quarries and
mortar messed about with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our
fathers."
At the gate of the chapel men discussed Ben's words; and two or three
of them stole away and herded Gwen into the corner of the field; and
they caught her and cut off her tail, and drove a staple into her udder.
Sunday morning eleven men from Capel Dissenters, with iron bands to
their clogs on their feet, and white aprons before their bellies, shouted
without the church: "We are come to pray from the book." The Parson
was affrighted, and left over tolling his bell, and he bolted and locked
the door, against which he set his body as one would set the stub of a
tree.
Running at the top of their speed the railers came to Ben, telling how
the Parson had put them to shame.
"Iobs you are," Ben answered. "The boy bach who loses the key of his
house breaks into his house. Does an old wench bar the dairy to her
mishtress?"
The men returned each to his abode, and an hour after midday they
gathered in the church burial-ground, and they drew up a tombstone,
and with it rammed the door; and they hurled stones at the windows;
and in the darkness they built a wall of dung in the room of the door.
Repentance sank into the Parson as he saw and remembered that which
had been done to him. He called to him his