'em, and mean to keep 'em,--it's for our convenience and our
interest;' for that's the long and short of it,--that's just the whole
of what all this sanctified stuff amounts to, after all; and I think
that it will be intelligible to everybody, everywhere."

"I do think, Augustine, you are so irreverent!" said Marie. "I think
it's shocking to hear you talk."

"Shocking! it's the truth. This religious talk on such matters,--why
don't they carry it a little further, and show the beauty, in its
season, of a fellow's taking a glass too much, and sitting a little too
late over his cards, and various providential arrangements of that sort,
which are pretty frequent among us young men;--we'd like to hear that
those are right and godly, too."

"Well," said Miss Ophelia, "do you think slavery right or wrong?"

"I'm not going to have any of your horrid New England directness,
cousin," said St. Clare, gayly. "If I answer that question, I know
you'll be at me with half a dozen others, each one harder than the last;
and I'm not a going to define my position. I am one of the sort that
lives by throwing stones at other people's glass houses, but I never
mean to put up one for them to stone."

"That's just the way he's always talking," said Marie; "you can't get
any satisfaction out of him. I believe it's just because he don't like
religion, that he's always running out in this way he's been doing."

"Religion!" said St. Clare, in a tone that made both ladies look at him.
"Religion! Is what you hear at church, religion? Is that which can bend
and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish,
worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous,
less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own
ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must
look for something above me, and not something beneath."

"Then you don't believe that the Bible justifies slavery," said Miss
Ophelia.

"The Bible was my _mother's_ book," said St. Clare. "By it she lived and
died, and I would be very sorry to think it did. I'd as soon desire
to have it proved that my mother could drink brandy, chew tobacco, and
swear, by way of satisfying me that I did right in doing the same. It
wouldn't make me at all more satisfied with these things in myself, and
it would take from me the comfort of respecting her; and it really is a
comfort, in this world, to have anything one can respe