upposed he was no worse
than others--besides, he was reformed now. Yes, they can all play the
hypocrite when they want to take in a fond, misguided woman!'

'Well, I think he's about as good as she is,' said I. 'But when Mr.
Huntingdon is married, he won't have many opportunities of consorting
with his bachelor friends;--and the worse they are, the more I long to
deliver him from them.'

'To be sure, my dear; and the worse he is, I suppose, the more you long
to deliver him from himself.'

'Yes, provided he is not incorrigible--that is, the more I long to
deliver him from his faults--to give him an opportunity of shaking off
the adventitious evil got from contact with others worse than himself,
and shining out in the unclouded light of his own genuine goodness--to do
my utmost to help his better self against his worse, and make him what he
would have been if he had not, from the beginning, had a bad, selfish,
miserly father, who, to gratify his own sordid passions, restricted him
in the most innocent enjoyments of childhood and youth, and so disgusted
him with every kind of restraint;--and a foolish mother who indulged him
to the top of his bent, deceiving her husband for him, and doing her
utmost to encourage those germs of folly and vice it was her duty to
suppress,--and then, such a set of companions as you represent his
friends to be--'

'Poor man!' said she, sarcastically, 'his kind have greatly wronged him!'

'They have!' cried I--'and they shall wrong him no more--his wife shall
undo what his mother did!'

'Well,' said she, after a short pause, 'I must say, Helen, I thought
better of your judgment than this--and your taste too. How you can love
such a man I cannot tell, or what pleasure you can find in his company;
for "what fellowship hath light with darkness; or he that believeth with
an infidel?"'

'He is not an infidel;--and I am not light, and he is not darkness; his
worst and only vice is thoughtlessness.'

'And thoughtlessness,' pursued my aunt, 'may lead to every crime, and
will but poorly excuse our errors in the sight of God. Mr. Huntingdon, I
suppose, is not without the common faculties of men: he is not so
light-headed as to be irresponsible: his Maker has endowed him with
reason and conscience as well as the rest of us; the Scriptures are open
to him as well as to others;--and "if he hear not them, neither will he
hear though one rose from the dead." And remember, Helen,' continued she,