bestowed on her had been so
far thrown away that she was a dangerous, self-willed girl, whom all
feared and almost all shunned, as if she carried with her some malignant
influence.

He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie had always
given trouble. There seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about her.
Perfectly unaccountable. A very dark case. Never amenable to good
influences. Had sent her good books from the Sunday-school library.
Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of one of them, and kept
it, and flung the book out of the window. It was a picture of Eve's
temptation; and he recollected her saying that Eve was a good woman,--and
she'd have done just so, if she'd been there. A very sad child, very sad;
bad from infancy. He had talked himself bold, and said all at once,
"Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your doctrine of the
congenital sinfulness of human nature? I am afraid that is the only thing
which goes to the bottom of the difficulty."

The old minister's face did not open so approvingly as Mr. Fairweather
had expected.

"Why, yes,--well,--many find comfort in it,--I believe;--there is much to
be said,--there are many bad people,--and bad children,--I can't be so
sure about bad babies,--though they cry very malignantly at
times,--especially if they have the stomach-ache. But I really don't know
how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act in her
like instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the bearing of
our ordinary rules of judgment."

"But this depraved tendency, Doctor,--this unaccountable perverseness.
My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature.
Oh, those words of the Psalmist, 'shapen in iniquity,' and the rest!
What are we to do with them,--we who teach that the soul of a child is an
unstained white tablet?"

"King David was very subject to fits of humility, and much given to
self-reproaches," said the Doctor, in a rather dry way. "We owe you and
your friends a good deal for calling attention to the natural graces,
which, after all, may, perhaps, be considered as another form of
manifestation of the divine influence. Some of our writers have pressed
rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward evil as such.
It maybe questioned whether these views have not interfered with the
sound training of certain young persons, sons of clergymen and others. I
am nearer of your mind ab