Put Yourself in His Place | Page 3

license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits
you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association/Carnegie-Mellon University" within the 60 days following

each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual
(or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon
University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE
by
Charles Reade
I will frame a work of fiction upon notorious fact, so that anybody shall
think he can do the same; shall labor and toil attempting the same, and
fail--such is the power of sequence and connection in
writing."--HORACE: Art of Poetry.

CHAPTER I
.
Hillsborough and its outlying suburbs make bricks by the million, spin
and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest needle
up to a ship's armor, and so add considerably to the kingdom's wealth.
But industry so vast, working by steam on a limited space, has been
fatal to beauty: Hillsborough, though built on one of the loveliest sites
in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation. All ups and
down and back slums. Not one of its wriggling, broken- backed streets
has handsome shops in an unbroken row. Houses seem to have battled
in the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down dead out of the melee.
But worst of all, the city is pockmarked with public-houses, and bristles

with high round chimneys. These are not confined to a locality, but
stuck all over the place like cloves in an orange. They defy the law, and
belch forth massy volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of
crape over the place, and veil the sun and the blue sky even in the
brightest day. But in a fog--why, the air of Hillsborough looks a thing
to plow, if you want a dirty job.
More than one crystal stream runs sparkling down the valleys, and
enters the town; but they soon get defiled, and creep through it heavily
charged with dyes, clogged with putridity, and bubbling with poisonous
gases, till at last they turn to mere ink, stink, and malaria, and people
the churchyards as they crawl.
This infernal city, whose water is blacking, and whose air is coal, lies
in a basin of delight and beauty: noble slopes, broad valleys, watered
by rivers and brooks of singular beauty, and fringed by fair woods in
places; and, eastward, the hills rise into mountains, and amongst them
towers Cairnhope, striped with silver rills, and violet in the setting sun.
Cairnhope is a forked mountain, with a bosom of purple heather and a
craggy head. Between its forks stood, at the period of my story, a great
curiosity; which merits description on its own account, and also as the
scene of curious incidents to come.
It was a deserted church. The walls were pierced with arrow-slits,
through which the original worshipers had sent many a deadly shaft in
defense of their women and cattle, collected within the sacred edifice at
the first news of marauders coming.
Built up among the heathery hills in times of war and trouble, it had
outlived its uses. Its people had long ago gone down into the fruitful
valley, and raised another church in their midst, and left this old house
of God alone, and silent as the tombs of their forefathers that lay
around it.
It was no ruin, though on the road to decay. One of the side walls was
much lower than the other, and the roof had two great waves, and was
heavily clothed, in natural patterns, with velvet moss, and sprinkled all
over with bright amber lichen: a few tiles had slipped off in two places,
and showed the rafters brown with time and weather: but the structure
was solid and sound; the fallen tiles lay undisturbed beneath the eaves;
not a brick, not a beam, not a gravestone had been stolen, not even to
build the new church: of the diamond panes full half remained; the

stone font was still in its place, with its Gothic cover, richly carved; and
four brasses reposed in the chancel, one of them loose in its bed.
What had caused the church to be deserted had kept it from being
desecrated; it was clean out of the way. No gypsy, nor vagrant, ever
slept there, and even the boys of the village kept their