position, and that the
adverse influences should be taken off. I expected that among these
adverse influences they would have mentioned the faults of their
own dispositions. My own opinion had been that half the misdoings
of men came from congenital defects of character which they had
brought with them into the world, and that constitutional courage,
right-mindedness, and practical ability were as much gifts of nature
or circumstance as the accidents of fortune. A change in this respect
was of more consequence than in any other. But with themselves they
were all apparently satisfied, and they required only an improvement
in their surroundings. The alterations were rapidly made. The duchess
was sent to begin her life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to
attend the village school and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine
gentleman was made a plowboy. The authors and preachers were to become
mechanics, and bound apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths. A
philosopher who, having had a good fortune and unbroken health, had
insisted that the world was as good as it could be made, was to be
born blind and paralytic, and to find his way through life under the
new conditions. The thieves and cheats, who pretended that their
misdemeanors were due to poverty, were to find themselves, when they
arrived in the world again, in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup
of Lethe was sent round. The past became a blank. They were hurried
into the train; the engine screamed and flew away with them.

"They will be all here again in a few years," the station-master said,
"and it will be the same story over again. I have had these very
people in my hands a dozen times. They have been tried in all
positions, and there is still nothing to show, and nothing but
complaints of circumstances. For my part, I would put them out
altogether." "How long is it to last?" I asked. "Well," he said, "it
does not depend on me. No one passes here who cannot prove that he has
lived to some purpose. Some of the worst I have known made at last
into pigs and geese, to be fatted up and eaten, and made of use that
way. Others have become asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be
beaten with sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a hundred
generations. All animated creatures tend to take the shape at last
which suits their character."

The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell rang. The
scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was roll