Edmund Gosse and his father, 1857
This is one of my favourite lines of dialogue in all English literature. The book from which it’s taken, Father and Son, is the only one of Edmund Gosse’s works still widely read, but not widely enough.
It seemed as if it were I who were the jealous monitor, and my Father the deprecating penitent. I sat up in the coverlid, and I shook a finger at him. ‘Papa,’ I said, ‘don’t tell me that she’s a pedobaptist?‘
Sunnyland Slim sings about a similar pedobaptist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEa6KiV8_c
