to see finely-dressed ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself
that he roared with laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 'Arry
with his Bank Holiday squirt of dirty water. I like to read that Carlyle
threw bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous
over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of
well-balanced mind. I think of the fifty foolish things a week _I_ do,
and say to myself, "I, too, am a literary man."

I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his good
hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his Master.
Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey's end, the memory of
a voice saying--"Thy sins be forgiven thee." There must have been good,
even in Judas.

Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it, and
much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it. But Nature seems
to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless stones, if
in them she may hide away her precious metals. Perhaps, also, in
human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross, provided that by
crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a little gold, sufficient
to repay her for the labour of the world. We wonder why she troubles to
make the stone. Why cannot the gold lie in nuggets on the surface?
But her methods are secrets to us. Perchance there is a reason for the
quartz. Perchance there is a reason for the evil and folly, through
which run, unseen to the careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.

Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there. We claim to have it
valued. The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell. We are vile
among the vile, a little evil people. But we are great. Pile up the
bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven's gate, calling for
vengeance, yet we are great--with a greatness and a virtue that the
untempted angels may not reach to. The written history of the human
race, it is one long record of cruelty, of falsehood, of oppression.
Think you the world would be spinning round the sun unto this day, if
that written record were all? Sodom, God would have spared had there
been found ten righteous men within its walls. The world is saved by its
just men. History sees them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of
accidents. Judge you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true
Temple of Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes
only, the thief and the p