Happily, however, there is possible a middle course. We need not grovel in the sinks and cellars, neither need we ruminate upon the house-tops. We can settle ourselves as it were, in that easy, neutral smoking-room of literature, where we can put off broadcloth for fustian; and utter our heresies with still a chance left us of being forgiven. Here we may expect to meet only with that mature and seasoned criticism that holds the scale very evenly between the outspoken and the insolent. While by no means to be accounted friendly towards the vile excrescences of swearing, the ordinary man of the world is not to be repelled by every street oath, or put to lasting confusion by every passing word of unseemliness. To put it upon no higher ground than that of mere custom, it were too arrogant to assume abhorrence of a practice that is as trite and customary as the incidents of one's daily rounds. Besides, there is another explanation for the supineness that is exhibited towards errors of this description. It could be shown how, by a slight mental process, the extravagances and the follies of other men are capable of offering a subtle compliment to a person's understanding. They set it off. They adorn what he fancies to be his intellectual superiority, and he is not indisposed in consequence to extend a feeble patronage towards the very vices which, did he not experience ever so slight a benefit from them, he would otherwise be foremost in decrying. Again, it were too obviously inconsistent to take our repose in a tavern and yet direct our homilies at tavern habits, at the enormity of tobacco-smoking or of drinking drams. And yet it may be possible for most of us to go back to no distant time when we sickened at the scent of the finest Virginian and the juice of the juniper was bitter. It was not a great while ago certainly!
A great while ago! Say, courteous and gentle--nay, uncourteous and ungentle reader--can you so far travel back in your recollection as to recall your first parting from all that was homely and kindly and familiar? Do you remember the first separation from the half-score of faces that to you had peopled the earth and represented the whole sum and mystery of living? Can you now realise that desolate night, closing in upon the blank, colourless day, the lonely stages, the harsh grating of the wheels, all the impressions in fact of that long, pitiful journey that once came as a barrier between you and childish innocence? And then the arrival at that strange school; how hollow the laughter of the men, how shrill the chirp and twitter of the women! Do you remember the comfortless morrow that brought the first contact with your boy associates? They were probably harmless and good-natured enough, those uncouth, ill-fashioned boys, and doubtless there were among them many who would have been quick to requite a wrong and eager to soothe any injury. But how they pained you with their jests; how they bruised you in their boisterous play; how old they looked to your young eyes; how full of wiles and intrigue and savagery! And then their talk! not the mild caressing talk of the lips you loved, of the forms you knew, but loud and brazen, and savouring of cunning and high-handedness. And in their quarrels and their games, they swore--those boys swore; not all of them be it hoped, but the great giants and paladins among them who seemed to bear rule and mastery with whips and thongs. Many a time before, perhaps, you may have been seized with faintness and aversion at some imagined evil, that might as well have been enacted in some distant planet. But now the horror was no longer slumbering or remote; it was awake and crying at your door. Now, and within a few hours, were disclosed the sources of all the aimless brutalities, all the self-asserting iniquities that have played such havoc in an erring world. And, as these knowing fellows chattered over their scraps of worldly wisdom, and as their puny curses were bandied round, it seemed as if some great treason were being poured out, a trespass alike against God in heaven and the folks at home.