eed, if you come to that, I doubt whether many
people could produce as strong a certificate. Mine would be as big as a
table-cloth. There is indeed one member of the club, who pretends to say
that he caught me once making too free with his throat on a club night,
after every body else had retired. But, observe, he shuffles in his story
according to his state of civilation. When not far gone, he contents
himself with saying that he caught me ogling his throat; and that I was
melancholy for some weeks after, and that my voice sounded in a way
expressing, to the nice ear of a connoisseur, _the sense of opportunities
lost_--but the club all know that he's a disappointed man himself, and that
he speaks querulously at times about the fatal neglect of a man's coming
abroad without his tools. Besides, all this is an affair between two
amateurs, and every body makes allowances for little asperities
and sorenesses in such a case. "But," say you, "If no murderer, my
correspondent may have encouraged, or even have bespoke a murder." No, upon
my honor--nothing of the kind. And that was the very point I wished to
argue for your satisfaction. The truth is, I am a very particular man in
everything relating to murder; and perhaps I carry my delicacy too far. The
Stagyrite most justly, and possibly with a view to my case, placed virtue
in the [Greek: to meson] or middle point between two extremes. A golden
mean is certainly what every man should aim at. But it is easier talking
than doing; and, my infirmity being notoriously too much milkiness of
heart, I find it difficult to maintain that steady equatorial line between
the two poles of too much murder on the one hand, and too little on the
other. I am too soft--Doctor, too soft; and people get excused through
me--nay, go through life without an attempt made upon them, that ought not
to be excused. I believe if I had the management of things, there would
hardly be a murder from year's end to year's end. In fact I'm for virtue,
and goodness, and all that sort of thing. And two instances I'll give you
to what an extremity I carry my virtue. The first may seem a trifle; but
not if you knew my nephew, who was certainly born to be hanged, and would
have been so long ago, but for my restraining voice. He is horribly
ambitious, and thinks himself a man of cultivated taste in most branches of
murder, whereas, in fact, he has not one idea on the subject, but such
as he has stolen from me. This is so