It has been a
kind of hypocrisy with me to shake his hand and eat his dinner. When I
trusted him it was against my better instinct; and I have been struggling
against it these ten years, thinking it was a wicked prejudice, and ought
to be overcome."
"Why should we overcome such instincts?" asks Mr. Warrington. "Why
shouldn't we hate what is hateful in people and scorn what is mean? From
what friend Pen has described to me, and from some other accounts which
have come to my ears, your respectable nephew is about as loathsome a
little villain as crawls on the earth. Good seems to be out of his
sphere, and away from his contemplation. He ill-treats every one he comes
near; or, if, gentle to them, it is that they may serve some base
purpose. Since my attention has been drawn to the creature, I have been
contemplating his ways with wonder and curiosity. How much superior
Nature's rogues are, Pen, to the villains you novelists put into your
books! This man goes about his life business with a natural propensity to
darkness and evil--as a bug crawls, and stings, and stinks.
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