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“Ha, ha! this is luxury! Go on!”

“But come, now, answer me that question. Is there any way?”

“Well, none that I propose to tell you, my son. Ass! I don’t care what act you may turn your hand to, I can straightway whisper a word in your ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my business—and my joy—to make you repent of everything you do. If I have fooled away any opportunities it was not intentional; I beg to assure you it was not intentional.”

“Don’t worry; you haven’t missed a trick that I know of. I never did a thing in all my life, virtuous or otherwise, that I did n’t repent of within twenty-four hours. In church last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon. My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty dollars; I repented of that and reduced it another hundred; repented of that, and reduced it another hundred; repented of that and reduced it another hundred; repented of that and reduced the remaining fifty to twenty-five; repented of that and came down to fifteen; repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a half; when the plate came around at last, I repented once more and contributed ten cents. Well, when I got home, I did wish to goodness I had that ten cents back again! You never did let me get through a charity sermon without having something to sweat about.”

“Oh, and I never shall, I never shall. You can always depend on me.”

“I think so. Many and many’s the restless night I’ve wanted to take you by the neck. If I could only get hold of you now!”

“Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass; I am only the saddle of an ass. But go on, go on. You entertain me more than I like to confess.”

“I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying a little, to keep in practice.) Look here; not to be too personal, I think you are about the shabbiest and most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other people, for I should die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed monkey of a conscience as you are. Now if you were five or six feet high, and”—

“Oh, come! who is to blame?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why, you are; nobody else.”

“Confound you, I was n’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 I began 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 could n’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.”