Australian Tales - Setis

Speaking a Word in Season.
SOME time ago I was told an amusing story about a good old man,
who, in his labours of love, occasionally shewed more zeal than
discretion. I do not vouch for the authenticity of the incident, but as it
may convey a useful moral to other over-zealous workers, I will quote it
with a few fanciful variations.
“There once lived a barber, I cannot tell where, but it was in some
populous neighbourhood. He was a good, simple-minded man, and
feeling in his heart that joy and peace which all true believers feel, he
was desirous that his neighbours should share in the happiness he had
found ‘without money and without price,’ and which is as free for the
poor as for the greatest personages upon earth. To carry his good desires
into operation, the barber resolved upon ‘speaking a word in season’ to
every customer who patronised his ‘easy shaving shop’ — a
praiseworthy resolution certainly — but one requiring much judgment in
its execution. One day a crabbed looking old gentleman walked into the
shop, and after taking off his hat, coat, and cravat, seated himself in a
chair, and gruffly intimated that he wanted to be shaved. The barber
bowed politely as usual, placed a napkin under his customer's chin, and
began to ply the lather brush about his face in true tonsoric style.
Meanwhile, the good barber was mentally debating on the most effective
mode of putting the all-important questions to his customer, as to the
state of his mind, and whether he had a good hope of heaven. But his
visage was so grim, and his demeanour so uninviting, that the barber's
courage almost failed him; so, to sharpen it up, he began to strop his
razor, and while doing so, a thought suddenly suggested itself to his
mind, that he had better not risk offending a strange customer by
abruptly putting questions to him upon so solemn and delicate a subject.
‘Ah, that's the devil, but I'll settle him,’ muttered the barber to himself,
though just loud enough for his lathered customer to overhear; and not
knowing that the zealous shaver's soliloquy had reference to the
supposed inward suggestion of Satan to neglect his duty, the old man
began to sit uneasily, under the impression that the barber was going
mad. Presently, as if he had sufficiently sharpened himself and his razor
too, he stood before his palpitating customer, with the blade of the razor
at right angles with its handle, and taking hold of his nose, in order to get
a fair scrape at the surface beneath the chin, asked in a solemn tone, and