rn stable-boy, to own a fast team and a trotting-wagon, to vie with
gamesters upon the road. That is an activity to which he is equal, in
which his value will appear. Both boys, and all boys, are looking
upward, only from widely different levels and to different heights.

The young blasphemer does not love blasphemy, but to have his head and
be let alone by Old Aunty, who combs his hair as if he were a girl. So
always there is some ideal aim in the mixed motive. Out of six gay young
men who drive and drink together, only one cares for the meat and the
bottle. With the rest this feasting gallantly on the best, regardless of
expense, is part of a system. It is in good style, is convivial. For
these green-horns of society to live together, to be _convivae_, is not
to think and labor together, as wise men use, but to laugh and be
drunken in company.

Into the lowest courses there enters something to keep the filth from
overwhelming self-respect. The advocates of slavery have not, as it
appears, lost all pretence of honor and honesty. Thieves are sustained
by a sense of the injustice of society. They do but right an old wrong,
taking bravely what was accumulated by cautious cunning. They cultivate
many virtues, and, like the best of us, make much of these, identify
themselves with these. If a man is harsh and tyrannical, he regrets that
he has too much force of character. And it is not safe to accuse a
harlot of stealing and lying. She has her ideal also, and strives to
keep the ulcer of sin within bounds,--to save a sweet side from
corruption.

Is this stooping very low to look for the Ideal Tendency? The greater
gain, if we find it prevailing in these depths. We may doubt whether
thieves and harlots are subject to the same law which irresistibly lifts
us, for we know that our own sin is not quite like other sin. But I must
not offer all the cheerful hope I feel for the worst offenders, because
too much faith passes for levity or impiety; and men thank God only for
deliverance from great dangers, not for preservation from all danger.
For gratitude we must not escape too easily and clean, but with some
smell of fire upon us.

Yet in our own experience this planning what we shall do and become is
constant, and always we escape from the present into larger air. The boy
will not be content with that skill in skating which occupies his mind
to-day. That belongs to the day and place, but next year he goes to the
academy and f