would starve."

"I shouldn't worry," replied Jephson, drily; "one half mankind has been
'reforming' the other half pretty steadily ever since the Creation, yet
there appears to be a fairly appreciable amount of human nature left in
it, notwithstanding. Suppressing sin is much the same sort of task that
suppressing a volcano would be--plugging one vent merely opens another.
Evil will last our time."

"I cannot take your optimistic view of the case," answered
MacShaughnassy. "It seems to me that crime--at all events, interesting
crime--is being slowly driven out of our existence. Pirates and
highwaymen have been practically abolished. Dear old 'Smuggler Bill' has
melted down his cutlass into a pint-can with a false bottom. The
pressgang that was always so ready to rescue our hero from his
approaching marriage has been disbanded. There's not a lugger fit for
the purposes of abduction left upon the coast. Men settle their 'affairs
of honour' in the law courts, and return home wounded only in the pocket.
Assaults on unprotected females are confined to the slums, where heroes
do not dwell, and are avenged by the nearest magistrate. Your modern
burglar is generally an out-of-work green-grocer. His 'swag' usually
consists of an overcoat and a pair of boots, in attempting to make off
with which he is captured by the servant-girl. Suicides and murders are
getting scarcer every season. At the present rate of decrease, deaths by
violence will be unheard of in another decade, and a murder story will be
laughed at as too improbable to be interesting. A certain section of
busybodies are even crying out for the enforcement of the seventh
commandment. If they succeed authors will have to follow the advice
generally given to them by the critics, and retire from business
altogether. I tell you our means of livelihood are being filched from us
one by one. Authors ought to form themselves into a society for the
support and encouragement of crime."

MacShaughnassy's leading intention in making these remarks was to shock
and grieve Brown, and in this object he succeeded. Brown is--or was, in
those days--an earnest young man with an exalted--some were inclined to
say an exaggerated--view of the importance and dignity of the literary
profession. Brown's notion of the scheme of Creation was that God made
the universe so as to give the literary man something to write about. I
used at one time to credit Brown with originality f