Page 48 - erewhon

the remembrance of which had been more than once un-
pleasant to me during my recent experiences.
Indeed, on one occasion I had even gone so far as to bap-
tize him, as well as I could, having ascertained that he had
certainly not been both christened and baptized, and gath-
ering (from his telling me that he had received the name
William from the missionary) that it was probably the first-
mentioned rite to which he had been subjected. I thought
it great carelessness on the part of the missionary to have
omitted the second, and certainly more important, cere-
mony which I have always understood precedes christening
both in the case of infants and of adult converts; and when
I thought of the risks we were both incurring I determined
that there should be no further delay. Fortunately it was not
yet twelve o’clock, so I baptized him at once from one of the
pannikins (the only vessels I had) reverently, and, I trust,
efficiently. I then set myself to work to instruct him in the
deeper mysteries of our belief, and to make him, not only in
name, but in heart a Christian.
It is true that I might not have succeeded, for Chow-
bok was very hard to teach. Indeed, on the evening of the
same day that I baptized him he tried for the twentieth time
to steal the brandy, which made me rather unhappy as to
whether I could have baptized him rightly. He had a prayer-
book—more than twenty years old— which had been given
him by the missionaries, but the only thing in it which had
taken any living hold upon him was the title of Adelaide the
Queen Dowager, which he would repeat whenever strongly
moved or touched, and which did really seem to have some