The passage to forty-seven

I started off as lay-reader in a Melbourne suburban church, and was kidnapped from the door of the vestry by two friends who were anxious for the reputation of their religion. One of them stood six-feet-three in his socks, and he it was who took me by the neck at half-past seven on a Friday night and pushed me into a hansom of such cramped proportions that my abductors were compelled to deposit themselves on top of me: they remained there until we reached our destination, a crafty, crouching old pub curled away somewhere behind the Exhibition Building.