Page:Omniana 2.djvu/327

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OMNIANA.
317

The Admiral now condescending to a question of simple chronology, asks in what year of the world Christ was born, and the Friar says in reply, Let us count our own years; I am sixty, you are sixty-five; I am near death, and you, by this reckoning, are still nearer. Is bull-fighting sinful? Yes.—Is it sinful to treat the people with a bull-fight, if you do not fight yourself? Certainly it is.—But why is it sinful? pursues the Admiral, sticking with the keenness of a sportsman to his favourite amusement, . . why is it sinful, when the practice is so customary, and is a thing allowed? Sir, says the honest Friar, if you will persist in these things at your age, I must tell you that you have one foot in the grave, and another in Hell.—St. Cosmes and St. Damian cut off a black man's leg, and fastened it upon a white man; which will have this leg at the Resurrection? The black man, and the other will then have his own original