第5章

"Confound you, I wasn't consulted about your personal appearance.""I don't care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. When you were eight or nine years old, I was seven feet high, and as pretty as a picture.""I wish you had died young! So you have grown the wrong way, have you?""Some of us grow one way and some the other. You had a large conscience once; if you've a small conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it.

However, both of us are to blame, you and I. You see, you used to be conscientious about a great many things; morbidly so, I may say. It was a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well, I took a great interest in my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with that I kept pelting at you until I rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of course Ibegan to lose ground, then, and shrivel a little--diminish in stature, get moldy, and grow deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly you fastened on to those particular sins; till at last the places on my person that represent those vices became as callous as shark-skin. Take smoking, for instance. I played that card a little too long, and I lost.

When people plead with you at this late day to quit that vice, that old callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all over like a shirt of mail. It exerts a mysterious, smothering effect; and presently I, your faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep! Sound? It is no name for it. I couldn't hear it thunder at such a time. You have some few other vices--perhaps eighty, or maybe ninety--that affect me in much the same way.""This is flattering; you must be asleep a good part of your time.""Yes, of late years. I should be asleep all the time but for the help Iget."

"Who helps you?"

"Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience I am acquainted with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my friend to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his own, and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal consolation. My field of usefulness is about trimmed down to tramps, budding authoresses, and that line of goods now; but don't you worry --I'll harry you on theirs while they last! Just you put your trust in me.""I think I can. But if you had only been good enough to mention these facts some thirty years ago, I should have turned my particular attention to sin, and I think that by this time I should not only have had you pretty permanently asleep on the entire list of human vices, but reduced to the size of a homeopathic pill, at that. That is about the style of conscience I am pining for. If I only had you shrunk you down to a homeopathic pill, and could get my hands on you, would I put you in a glass case for a keepsake? No, sir. I would give you to a yellow dog!

That is where you ought to be--you and all your tribe. You are not fit to be in society, in my opinion. Now another question. Do you know a good many consciences in this section?""Plenty of them."

"I would give anything to see some of them! Could you bring them here?

And would they be visible to me?"

"Certainly not."