ibly mutilated.
Despite his dreadful agony, the dying man's features were calm and
serene. "Great God," said he, "I thank thee that I am only suffering
from the fangs of the tiger and not of remorse." And here is Professor
Webster, endungeoned for the murder of Dr. Parkman. One morning he
sent for his jailer and asked to be placed in another cell. "At
midnight," he said, "the prisoners in the next cell tap on the wall
and whisper, 'Thou art a murderer.'" Now there were no prisoners in
the next cell. The whispers were the echoes of a guilty conscience.

Daniel Webster also testifies: Once he was asked what was the greatest
thought that had ever occupied his mind. "Who are here?" "Only your
friends." Then this colossal man answered: "There is no evil we can
not face or flee from but the consequences of duty disregarded. A
sense of obligation pursues us ever. It is omnipresent like the Deity.
If we take to ourselves wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still
with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness
shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are
yet with us. We can not escape their power nor fly from their
presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close,
and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther on
we shall find ourselves followed by the consciousness of duty--to pain
us forever if it has been violated, and to console us so far as God
has given us grace to perform it." Weighed against conscience the
world itself is but a bubble. For God himself is in conscience lending
it authority.

We also owe the great dramatists and novelists a debt, in that they
have portrayed and analyzed the essential facts of man's moral life.
That which Shakespeare does for us in "Macbeth," Victor Hugo does in
his "Les Miserables." The latter work, always ranked as one of the
seven great novels, exhibits happiness and character as fruits of
obedience to the soul's inner circle. Jean Valjean was an escaped
convict. Going into a distant province he assumed a new name and began
life again. He invented a machine, amassed wealth, became mayor of the
town, was honored and beloved by all. One evening the good mayor heard
of an old man in another town who had been arrested for stealing
fruit. The officer apprehending him perceived in the old man a
striking resemblance to Jean Valjean. Despite his p