I will have no Presbyterian, Moderate Low Churchmen, or Occasional Conformists, to be at or have anything to do with my funeral.

I die in the Faith of the True Catholic Church.

I desire to have a tomb stone over me, with a Latin inscription, and a lamp, or six wax candles, to burn seven days and nights thereon."-- _Vide_ ASHTON.] Was it any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of the British undertaker?
For the young man must prove to the town that he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him.
The fact was, that he had been virtuous enough to write a pious work entitled, "The Christian Hero," which he afterwards published, but as he had not grown sufficiently master of himself to live up to its golden precepts (nay, rather did he continue to spend his evenings in the taverns), the author came in for many a taunt and sneer.

Why did he not practice what he preached?
was the sarcastic query of his intimates.
Yet there was no thought of cant in what the soldier had done.

His design in issuing the "Christian Hero" was, as he explained in after years, "principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures." This secret admiration was too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say, of his acquaintances) upon him in a new light, would make him ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so contrary to life.
But the man was weak where the author was willing, and thus gay Richard went on "living so contrary a life" with true Celtic perversity, and made of himself anything but a Christian Hero.
Rather was he a jolly Pagan, with a passion for his wine and his coffee-house, and a kindly, merry word even for those who twitted him upon his inconsistency.