Caradoc Evans

“ Ben and Towy withdrew, and as they passed out they beheld that the scale of scarlet tablets touched the ground.
Then the Cloud vanished and God came out of the Cloud.
"My wrath is fierce," He said. "Bind these Welsh and torment them with vipers and with fire in the uttermost parts of Hell. They shall have no more remembrance before me."
"Will you destroy the just?" asked Moses.
"They have chosen."
"Shall the godly perish because of the godless?" ”

“ Josi's mother Mali touched her son, whispering this counsel: "Put to shame the last prayer, indeed now, Josi."
By and by Josi lifted his head and stood on his feet. This is what he said: "Asking was I if I was religious enough to spout in the company of the Respected."
"Out of the necks of young youths we hear pieces that are very sensible," said Bern-Davydd. "Come you, Josi Mali, to the saintly Big Seat." ”

“ Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said.
"Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. ”

“ Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah and of lofts has not the Temple two?"
"Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his mother?"
Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt him and send to me the meat." ”

“ As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?"
"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."
"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds. ”

“ He ordered Gwen to go to Ben.
"Recall to him this and that," he said. "A very good advert an M.P. would be for the business. Be you dressed like a lady. Take a fur coat on appro from the shop."
Often thereafter he bade his wife to take such a message. But Gwen had overcome her distress and she strew abroad her charms; for no man could now suffice her. So she always departed to one of her lovers and came back with fables on her tongue.
"What can you expect of the Welsh?" cried Enoch in his wrath. "He hasn't paid for the goods he got on tick from the shop. ”

“ Having exchanged the ten pounds for a ten-pound note, remorse seized Hugh. "A son of a mule am I," he said. "Dangerous is paper as he blows. If he blows! Bulky are soferens and shillings. If you lose two, you got the remnants. But they are showy and tempting." He laid the note under his pillow and slept, and he took it with him, secreted on his person, to Kingsend Chapel, where every Sunday morning and evening he sang hymns, bowed under prayer, and entertained his soul with sermons.
Just before departing on Monday he gave the note to Millie. ”

“ Withal she gave Enoch pleasure. She clothed herself with costly garments, adorned her person with rings and ornaments, and she modeled her hair in the way of a bob-wig. Enoch gave in to her in all things; he took her among Welsh master builders, drapers, grocers, dairymen, into their homes and such places as they assembled in; and his pride in his wife was nearly as great as his pride in the twenty plate-glass windows of his shop.
In her vanity Gwen exalted her estate.
"I hate living over the shop," she said. "It's so common. Let's take a house away from here." ”

“ Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to the Respected.
[p 162] "Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be. Swells are youths shop." ”

“ Joseph shouted. "Don't you scream. Hap you will soften [p 169] Nuncle's heart if you say to him that my funeral is close."
Madlen put a mourning gown over her petticoats and a mourning bodice over her shawls, and she tarried in a field as long as it would take her to have traveled to Moriah; and in the heat of the sun she returned, laughing.
"Mistake, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph would die before her fault was found out. ”

“ Let you me keep my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen."
Even so. Josi had a name among Students' College, and even among ordained rulers of pulpits; and Mali went about her duties joyful and glad; it was as if the Kingdom of the Palace of White Shirts was within her. While at her labor she mumbled praises to the Big Man for His goodness, until an awful thought came to [p 192] her: "Insulting am I to the Large One bach. Only preachers are holy enough to stand in their pray. Not stop must I now; go on my knees will I in the dark." ”

“ As he spoke the clothier heaped garments on the counter.
"Put out your arms," he ordered Kate, "and take the suits to a room for Llew to try on."
Kate obeyed, and Llew hymning "Moriah" took her round the waist and embraced her, and the woman, hungering for love, gladly gave herself up. Soon attired in a black frock coat, a black waistcoat, and black trousers, Llew stepped into the shop.
"A champion is the rabbit," he said; "and very tame."
"If meat doesn't come down," said the clothier, "in the belly she'll be as well." ”

“ White cabbages and new potatoes, eggs and measures of corn, milk and butter and money we give to the preacher. We trim our few acres until our shoulders are crutched and the soil is in the crevices of our flesh that his estate shall be a glory unto God. We make for him a house which is as a mansion set amid hovels and for the building thereof the widow must [p 6] set aside portions of her weekly old age pension. These things and many more we do, for forgiveness of sin is obtained by sacrifice. Such folk as hold back their offerings have their names proclaimed in the pulpit. ”

“ Joseph to a shop draper. Has he any odds?"
"Proper that you seek," replied Essec. "Seekers we all are. Sit you. No room there is for Joseph now I am selling Penlan."
"Like that is the plan of your head?" Madlen murmured, concealing her dread.
"Seven of pounds of rent is small. Sell at eighty I must."
"Wait for Joseph to prosper. Buy then he will. Buy for your mam you will, Joseph?"
"Sorry I cannot change my think," Essec declared.
"Hard is my lot; no male have I to ease my burden." ”

“ Think you do as I think."
"Know you for long I would," said Gwen.
"For ever," cried Ben. "But wedded you are. Read you a bit of the lecture [p 106] will I." Having ended his reading and having sobbed over and praised that which he had read, Ben uttered: "Certain you come again. Come you and eat supper when the wife is not at home."
Gwen quaked as she went to her car, and she sought a person who professed to tell fortunes, and whom she made to say: "A gentleman is in love with you. And he loves you for your brain. He is not your husband. He is more to you than your husband. ”

“ The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond Aben brought his animals.
One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: "Serious sure, an old bother is this."
"Iss-iss," replied Dan. "Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach."
"How speech you if I said: 'Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my ditches'?"
"The land will suck him before he goes far," Dan answered. ”

“ It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the preacher, and he is in the semblance of the preacher; and we believe in him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in our hagglings and cheatings. Becca Penffos prays that the dealer's eyes are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan en [p 7] ticed him; Ianto Tybach says: "Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike my brother Enoch dead and blind and see I have his fields without any old bother. ”

“ Remember Essec Pugh, whose right foot is tied into a club knot. Here's the club to kick sinners as my perished brother tried to kick the Bad Satan from the inside of his female Madlen with his club of his baston. Some preachers search over the Word. Some preachers search in the Word. But search under the Word does preacher Capel Moriah. What's the light I find? A stutterer was Moses. As the middle of a butter cask were the knees of Paul. A splotch like a red cabbage leaf was on the cheek of Solomon. ”

“ Speak what you want. Sitting there is not respectable. You are like an old woman from the country."
"Come am I to sorrow," answered Mali. "Boy all grand was Josi bach. Look at him now will I."
"Talking no sense you are," said Mary Ann. "Why you do not see that the house is full of muster? Will there not be many Respecteds at the funeral?" ”

“ Abel said. "Fairish I must be with your sisters."
"Why for you cavil like that, father? The money of mam came to Deinol. Am I not her son?"
Though his daughters, murmured—"We wake at the caw of the crows," they said, "and weary in the young of the day"—Abel obeyed his son, who thereupon departed and came to Thornton East to the house of Catherine Jenkins, a widow woman, with whom he took the appearance of a burning lover. ”

“ Our politicians, crafty pupils of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. ”

“ It is not my fall that is required—if that were so I would gladly make the sacrifise—the zupreme sacrifise, if wanted—but it is the fall of the Party that these men are after. He who repeats one foul thing is doing his level best to destroy the fabric of this magnificent organisation that has been reared by your brains. ”

“ The inhabitants are clothed in the white shirts in which [p 4] they were buried and in which they arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.
Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish.
Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God ”

“ Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea. ”

“ Simon said. "Hap [p 234] he parted with all. Full of feeling you are. But useless that we loll here. No odds for me; this is my day in the City. How will your boss treat you, Annie, for being away without a pass? Angry will your buyer be, I would be in a temper with my young ladies. Hie to the office, Jane. Don't you borrow borrowings from me if you are sacked."
"You are as sly as the cow that steals into clover," Annie cried out. ”

“ Of a sudden a sickness struck him, and in the hush which is sometimes before death, he summoned to him his sons. "Off away am I to the Palace," he said.
"Large will be the shout of joy among the angels," Aben told him.
[p 122] "And much weeping there will be in Sion," said Dan. "Speak you a little verse for a funeral preach."
"Cease you your babblings, now, indeed," Sheremiah demanded. "Born first you were, Aben, and you get Rhydwen. And you, Dan, Penlan."
"Father bach," Aben cried, "not right that you leave more to me than Dan."
"Crow you do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. ”

“ The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat. Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.
"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his [p 35] name shall be. The Large Maker gives and a One He is for taking away."
He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman from Drefach. ”

“ But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and when Abel married he let him live in Tybach—the mud-walled, straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa—and he let him farm six acres of land.
The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest folk; and they took [p 33] more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick. ”

“ Peering through Llew's body, Saint David saw that the dealer dealt treacherously, and that the money which he got for the garments was two pounds over that which was proper.
Llew walked away whistling. "A simple fellow is the black," he said to himself. "Three soverens was bad."
On the evening of the next day—that day being the Sabbath—the soldier worshiped in Capel Kingsend; and betwixt the sermon and the benediction, the preacher delivered this speech: "Very happy am I to see so many warriors here once more. ”

“ Tim and Martha did not speak to any one of this that had been done to their daughter.
"Punished must a thief be," said Tim. "Bad is the wench."
"Bad is our little daughter," answered Martha.
Sabbath morning came and she wept.
"Showing your lament you are, old fool," cried Tim.
[p 207] "For sure, no. But the mother am I."
Tim said: "My inside shivers oddly. Girl fach too young to be in jail."
A fire was set in the preacher's parlor and the doors of the Tabernacle were opened. Tim, the Bible in his hands, stepped up to the pulpit, his eyes closed in prayer, and as he passed up he stumbled. ”