Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/95

 TRAVELING WITH A REFORMER

&quot;Yes, sometimes. Lies told to injure a person, and lies told to profit yourself are not justifiable, but lies told to help another person, and lies told in the public interest oh, well, that is quite another matter. Anybody knows that. But never mind about the methods : you see the result. That youth is going to be useful now, and well behaved. He had a good face. He was worth saving. Why, he was worth saving on his mother s account if not his own. Of course, he has a mother sisters, too. Damn those people who are always forgetting that ! Do you know, I ve never fought a duel in my life never once and yet have been challenged, like other people. I could always see the other man s unoffending women folks or his little children stand ing between him and me. They hadn t done any thing I couldn t break their hearts, you know.&quot;

He corrected a good many little abuses in the course of the day, and always without friction always with a fine and dainty diplomacy&quot; which left no sting behind ; and he got such happiness and such contentment out of these performances that I was obliged to envy him his trade and perhaps would have adopted it if I could have managed the necessary deflections from fact as confidently with my mouth as I believe I could with a pen, behind the shelter of print, after a little practice.

Away late that night we were coming up- town in a horse-car when three boisterous roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilarious obscenities and pro fanities right and left among the timid passengers, some of whom were women and children. Nobody

�� �