He had the figure and the
tonsured head. His coarse, patched clothes cut like the homely
garments of the simple people of the day, were not wholly out of
keeping to the part. The idea was visualized about him; the
simplicity and the poverty of the great monastic orders in their
vast, noble humility. All striking and real until one saw his
face!
My father used to say that the great orders of God were correct
in this humility; for in its vast, comprehensive action, the
justice of God moved in a great plain, where every indicatory
event was precisely equal; a straw was a weaver's beam.
God hailed men to ruin in his court, not with spectacular
devices, but by means of some homely, common thing, as though to
abase and overcome our pride.
My father moved the sheets of foolscap, and tested the point of
the quill pen like one who considers with deliberation. He
dipped the point into the inkpot and slowly wrote a dozen formal
words.
Then he stopped and put down the pen.
"The contests of the courts," he said, "are usually on the
question of identity. I ought to see this slave for a correct
description.
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