This is abook I've been thinking about reading for a long time. When I saw this cover online (@ Biblio.com) I had to buy it. It arrived in the mail yesterday. I finished the DDR I'd been working on today. I have 15 more days until DDRD 3,000. Figuring that I'd read an average of 30 pages per day, I wanted a book about 450 pages long. This is 319 pages. So I decided to go with this, then see if I can tuck in one more short book before Day 3,000.
So let's go.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,986) January 5, 2026
Read to page 35.
"...we must judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do." (9) An interesting line. While I'm not necessarily in agreeing it, it seems to me that this is very close (and perhaps identical to) something I had Brother Zachary say in my novel, A Matter of Reason: "God is the only one who cares more about what you want to be than about what you are." (Obviously) if I don't know if I agree with that either. Just sayin', sir.
"...in old age we live under the shadow of Death, which like a sword of Damocles may descend at any moment, but we have so long found life to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt that we have become like the people who live under the Vesuvius, and chance it without much misgiving." (27) This Butler fellow is quite the smart ass. I like that in a writer.
BTW, my copy of this book was published in 1954. 72 years ago!
Day 2 (DDRD 2,987) January 6, 2026
Read to page 72.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,988) January 7, 2026
Read to page 110.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,989) January 8, 2026
Read to page 150.
There's a reference to an organ with wooden pipes which stopped me in my tracks and sent me Googling. I found this fascinating video:
https://youtu.be/p0iL0FQL92s?si=QviEfs7VX37YiqWfDay 5 (DDRD 2,990) January 9, 2026
Read to page 185.
Hey, look!
My old friend Henry Thomas Buckle!
"We can conceive of St. Paul or even our Lord Himself as drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as smoking a cigarette...." (180)
Now that's funny.
When young Ernest hears Mr. Hawke's sermon and tips over into religious fervor, I have to admit that he reminds me of young me. Oh, the things I did. The prayer circle in the woods. Carrying a Bible around. Other stuff. I guess I've always been on the edge of religious fanaticism. Even now.
In other news...sorry to say that my 72 year old copy of this book has begun to come apart. First the cover, then the spine split most of the way up. Tape is holding things together for now, but it's in fragile shape.
"We must all sow our spiritual wild oats." (183)
Day 6 (DDRD 2,991) January 10, 2026
Read to page 226.
"The Bible is not without its value to us, the clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling block which cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too completely. Of course, I mean, on the supposition that they read it, which, happily, they seldom do. If people read the Bible as the ordinary British churchman or church woman reads it, it is harmless enough; but if they read it with any care--which we should assume they will if we give it them at all--it is fatal to them." (188)
Well. That's from a conversation between Ernest and another minister. The other minister also insists that the church must go back to some basic Catholic thoughts and practices if it is to properly serve its people. For instance, he insists upon the necessity of confession.
Clever Shake-speare allusion here: "The world was all out of joint, and instead of feeling it to be a cursed spite that he was born to set it right, he thought he was just the kind of person that was wanted for the job, and was eager to set to work, only he did not exactly know how to begin...." (198)
Reference Ernest's, education, the narrator tells us "By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes out altogether. " (212)
The discretion Butler shows vis-a-vis Ernest's "attack" on Miss Matland is not helpful. We're left with no idea if Ernest physically assaulted her or limited his actions to words...and that matters. Sign of the times, I suppose.
Day 7 (DDRD 2,992) January 11, 2026
Read to page 260.
"The greater part of every family is always odious: if there are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as much as can be expected." (230)
"WHEN I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me that in reality he was wanting to do the very last thing which it would have entered into his head to think of wanting. I mean that he was trying to give up father and mother for Christ's sake. He would have said he was giving them up because he thought they hindered him in the pursuit of his truest and most lasting happiness. Granted, but what is this if it is not Christ? What is Christ if He is not this? He who takes the highest and most self-respecting view of his own welfare which it is in his power to conceive, and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a Christian whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he does not. A rose is not the less a rose because it does not know its own name." (235)
I have often had a similar thought. So many people that I've talked to have expressed the idea that they have no faith in the existence of God, but that they do believe, for instance, in the Big Bang. When they talk about what they believe in, however, it seems to me that they are just using a euphemism for God because they lack the strength* to name it God.
It seems astonishing to me that someone could have written this in 1884 (-ish; the book was written between 1873 and 1884):
"As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names — not about things; practically the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. This was the crowning point of the edifice; when he had got here he no longer wished to molest even the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his hand without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. That wary prelate himself might perhaps have been of a different opinion, but the robins and thrushes that hop about our lawns are not more needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them out crumbs of bread in winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my hero." (237 - 238)
When Ernest leaves the prison, he is overcome with emotion and turns to lean against the wall and weep. He was leaving behind his entire life, setting out on a new road with nothing to hang onto. This made me think of the divorces in my life, especially the second one. I lost the love of my life then, and it emptied me out. For years I was in a desperate state, and the only thing that kept me going...kept me from suicide... was the knowledge that my children needed me. Many (but not all, thankfully) of the friends who had supported me during the divorce got tired of my shit and wandered away. I don't blame them. I was barely even recognizable as human. All of the strength that I had in me was reserved for my kids. Even now, 15 years after that divorce, I am conscious of the gap that's been left inside of me. I no longer long for the love that was lost, but I know that I won't ever recover...no matter how much I want to. It's like wanting to regrow a lost limb. All the desire in your heart, all the strength of your will, cannot make it happen.
In other news...in case you ever need to know, the phrase "sported the oak" means "From sport (“(archaic) to close or shut (a door)”) and oak (“outer (lockable) door of a set of rooms in a college (especially of the University of Cambridge or University of Oxford) or similar institution, especially one made of oak wood”)."
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sport_one%27s_oak)
"...he had, in fact, had to burn his house down in order to get his roast sucking pig...." (255)
You know, I really like this Butler fellow. There are a couple dozen of his books at the library, but most of them are in e-versions. Hmmm.
* It may be unfair of me to label this as a lack of "strength," but I have to admit that that's what it seems like to me.
Day 8 (DDRD 2,993) January 12, 2026
Read to page 299. So might as well go ahead and finish it up, right?
Day 9 (DDRD 2,994) January 13, 2026
Read to page 319...TheEnd. Well. That was quite a good read, actually. I think I'm going to read some more Samuel Butler right soon. But first..I'm thinking maybe Clifford D. Simak's All Flesh is Grass. A little Flesh unit.
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