for one midnight hour taste it, and so
understand it, then there would be the same hope for thee that, I bless
God, there still is for me!

Let us bend all our strength and all our wit to this, went on Lucifer, to
make their castle a warehouse instead of a garrison. Let us set
ourselves and all our allies, he explained to the duller-witted among the
devils, to make their hearts a shop,--some of them, you know, are
shopkeepers; a bank,--some of them are bankers; a farm,--some of them are
farmers; a study,--some of them are students; a pulpit,--some of them
like to preach; a table,--some of them are gluttons; a drawing-room,--some
of them are busybodies who forget their own misery in retailing other
people's misery from house to house. Be wise as serpents, said the old
serpent; attend, each several fallen angel of you, to his own special
charge. Study your man. Get to the bottom of your man. Follow him
about; never let him out of your sight; be sure before you begin, be sure
you have the joint in his harness, the spot in his heel, the chink in his
wall full in your eye. I do not surely need to tell you not to scatter
our snares for souls at random, he went on. Give the minister his study
Bible, the student his classic, the merchant his ledger, the glutton his
well-dressed dish and his elect year of wine, the gossip her sweet
secret, and the flirt her fool. Study them till they are all naked and
open to your sharp eyes. Find out what best makes them forget even for
one night their misery and ply them with that. If I ever see that soul I
have set thee over on his knees on account of his misery I shall fling
thee on the spot into the bottomless pit. And if any of you shall
anywhere discover a man--and there are such men--a man who forgets his
misery through always thinking and speaking about it, only keep him in
his pulpit, and off his knees, and no man so safe for hell as he. There
are fools, and there are double-dyed fools, and that man is the chief of
them. Give him his fill of sin and misery; let him luxuriate himself in
sin and misery; only, keep him there, and I will not forget thy most
excellent service to me.

Make all their hearts, so Lucifer summed up, as he dismissed his
obsequious devils, make all their several hearts each a warehouse, a
shop, a farm, a pulpit, a library, a nursery, a supper-table, a chamber
of wantonness--let it be to each man just after his own heart. Only,
keep--as you shall an