author
to state, that he was going to drown the two villains of the
piece--a certain Doctor F---- and a certain Mr. T. H---- on board
the "President," or some other tragic ship--but you see I relented. I
pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face amid the crowd of shuddering
people on that reeling deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, "Thou
ghastly lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned: thou shalt have a
fever only; a knowledge of thy danger; and a chance--ever so small a
chance--of repentance." I wonder whether he DID repent when he found
himself in the yellow-fever, in Virginia? The probability is, he
fancied that his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his
death-bed. Do you imagine there is a great deal of genuine right-down
remorse in the world? Don't people rather find excuses which make
their minds easy; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have been
lamentably belied and misunderstood; and try and forgive the persecutors
who WILL present that bill when it is due; and not bear malice against
the cruel ruffian who takes them to the police-office for stealing the
spoons? Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I
believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and
which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel
was never quite made up. I said to his brother, "Why is your brother's
soul still dark against me? It is I who ought to be angry and
unforgiving: for I was in the wrong." In the region which they now
inhabit (for Finis has been set to the volumes of the lives of both
here below), if they take any cognizance of our squabbles, and
tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that
my little error was not of a nature unpardonable. If you have never
committed a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be
heavy. Ha, dilectissimi fratres! It is in regard of sins NOT found
out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and
lugubrious minor key), Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus.

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not seldom perpetrate,
is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, for
my part, I will offer up a special libera me. This is the sin of
schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young
or old people. Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my
soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the presen