Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/121

116 depended on, and generally passion-driven; or rather you may set it down as incontrovertibly true, that wherever you find one of the class alluded to, there also will you find a devout disciple of Onan. I once lost the "friendship" of a male human being of a slightly different type from the above, yet still a monstrosity. He had fed me for months in exchange for information marketable at far higher prices than he paid—still I was grateful; and one day he proposed that I should aid him in a cruel scheme; but I preferred to go hungry, ay, starve outright, rather than comply with his demands; because I well knew that to do so would be conniving at an outrage against an innocent child, in the first place, and at his own destruction and probable death, in the second; hence my pity for her made me foil him; and my friendship for him caused me to defeat his well-cherished plans. I knew I should transform him, and his household, too, into bitter enemies of mine; yet still I determined to do right, no matter at what sacrifice or pain to me; and at once decided to protect a young thing, and save him from himself, by in no manner lending either knowledge, power or influence, to do an evil deed. Magic powers, too, he wanted,—he, an old man, of eight and sixty!—to enable him to compass the ruin, or "marry"—just think of it!—a mere child, of but a few months over fifteen summers,—fair to look on; a hundred weight of beauty and glee; simple, heedless, joyous as a morning bird, carolling its sun-greeting roundelay; and he coarse as rag-carpet; brutal as a Kaffir on the war-path; lecherous as a satyr; one-third human, two-thirds goat; nearly two hundred pounds of rough, uncouth, unwashed feculence, whose presence anywhere was a sign hung out, warning passers-by to "keep to the windward." And yet this man had a great, rich jewel of goodness, away down in the inner deeps, and that it was which, as will be hereinafter seen, urged him to sacrifice all things in the vague hope of achieving one certain, but tremendous guerdon,—the salvation of his own soul; yet he knew not what he was striving after. I did; and so instead of helping him wed her, I cautioned the child against it, because I knew such a step meant inevitable death to her within a few brief, lust-harried, agonizing months; for the gentle Adonis had confidentially boasted to me of