Old Stuff

O what fun!

Many thanks to Donna Marie Lewis for pointing this out to me:

The time at length was come; Reding could not bear more; and, as it happened, his visitor's offence gave him the means, as well as a cause, for punishing him, "Oh," he said suddenly, "then I suppose, Dr. Kitchens, you can't tolerate the cross?"
"Oh no; tolerate it!" answered Dr. Kitchens; "it is Antichrist."
"You can't bear the sight of it, I suspect, Dr. Kitchens?"
"I can't endure it, sir; what true Protestant can?"
"Then look here," said Charles, taking a small crucifix out of his writing-desk; and he held it before Dr. Kitchens's face.
Dr. Kitchens at once started on his feet, and retreated. "What's that?" he said, and his face flushed up and then turned pale; "what's that? it's the thing itself!" and he made a snatch at it. "Take it away, Mr. Reding; it's an idol; I cannot endure it; take away the thing!"
"I declare," said Reding to himself, "it really has power over him;" and he still confronted Dr. Kitchens with it, while he kept it out of Dr. Kitchens's reach.
"Take it away, Mr. Reding, I beseech you," cried Kitchens, still retreating, while Charles still pressed on him; "take it away, it's too much. Oh, oh! Spare me, spare me, Mr. Reding!-nehushtan-an idol!-oh, you young antichrist, you devil!-'tis He, 'tis He-torment!-spare me, Mr. Reding." And the miserable man began to dance about, still eyeing the sacred sign, and motioning it from him.
Charles now had victory in his hands: there was, indeed, some difficulty in steering Kitchens to the door from the place where he had been sitting, but, that once effected, he opened it with violence, and throwing himself on the staircase, he began to jump down two or three steps at a time, with such forgetfulness of everything but his own terror, that he came plump upon two persons who, in rivalry of each other, were in the act of rushing up: and, while he drove one against the rail, he fairly rolled the other to the bottom.

From Cardinal Newman's Loss and Gain, Part 3, Chapter 8.