charity sermon without having something to sweat about.”
“Oh, and I never shall, I never shall. You can always depend on me.”
“I think so. Many and many’s the restless night I’ve wanted to take you
by the neck. If I could only get hold of you now!”
“Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass; I am only the saddle of an ass.
But go on, go on. You entertain me more than I like to confess.”
I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying a little, to keep in
practice.) Look here; not to be too personal, I think you are about the
shabbiest and most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be
imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other people,
for I should die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed monkey of a
conscience as you are. Now if you were five or six feet high, and–”
“Oh, come! who is to blame?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why, you are; nobody else.”
“Confound you, I wasn’t consulted about your personal appearance.”
“I don’t care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. When you
were eight or nine years old, I was seven feet high, and as pretty as a
picture.”
“I wish you had died young! So you have grown the wrong way, have you?”
“Some of us grow one way and some the other. You had a large conscience
once; if you’ve a small conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it.
However, both of us are to blame, you and I. You see, you used to be
conscientious about a great many things; morbidly so, I may say. It was
a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well,
I took a great interest in my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which
certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with that I kept pelting at you
until I rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of course I
began to lose ground, then, and shrivel a little–diminish in stature,
get moldy, and grow deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly
you fastened on to those particular sins; till at last the places on my
person that represent those vices became as callous as shark-skin. Take
smoking, for instance. I played that card a little too long, and I lost.
When people plead with you at this late day to quit that vice, that old
callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all over like a shirt of
mail. It exerts a mysterious, smothering effect; and presently I, your
faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep! Sound? It is
no name for it. I couldn’t hear it thunder at such a time. You have
some few other vices–perhaps eighty, or maybe ninety–that affect me in
much the same way.”
“This is flattering; you must be asleep a good part of your time.”
“Yes, of late years. I should be asleep all the time but for the help I
get.”
“Who helps you?”
“Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience I am acquainted
with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my
friend to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his own,
and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal
consolation. My field of usefulness is about trimmed down to tramps,
budding authoresses, and that line of goods now; but don’t you worry
–I’ll harry you on theirs while they last! Just you put your trust in
me.”
“I think I can. But if you had only been good enough to mention these
facts some thirty years ago, I should have turned my particular attention
to sin, and I think that by this time I should not only have had you
pretty permanently asleep on the entire list of human vices, but reduced
to the size of a homeopathic pill, at that. That is about the style of
conscience I am pining for. If I only had you shrunk you down to a
homeopathic pill, and could get my hands on you, would I put you in a