I soon found there was truth in what he said.  My father was not angry, he was even half amused.  “I don’t think that plan of yours will hold water, Phil.  I hear you have been paying rents and redeeming furniture,—­that’s an expensive game, and a very profitless one.  Of course, so long as you are a benevolent gentleman acting for your own pleasure, it makes no difference to me.  I am quite content if I get my money, even out of your pockets,—­so long as it amuses you.  But as my collector, you know, which you are good enough to propose to be—­”

“Of course I should act under your orders,” I said; “but at least you might be sure that I would not commit you to any—­to any—­” I paused for a word.

“Act of oppression,” he said, with a smile—­“piece of cruelty, exaction—­there are half-a-dozen words—­”

“Sir—­” I cried.

“Stop, Phil, and let us understand each other.  I hope I have always been a just man.  I do my duty on my side, and I expect it from others.  It is your benevolence that is cruel.  I have calculated anxiously how much credit it is safe to allow; but I will allow no man, or woman either, to go beyond what he or she can make up.  My law is fixed.  Now you understand.  My agents, as you call them, originate nothing; they execute only what I decide—­”

“But then no circumstances are taken into account,—­no bad luck, no evil chances, no loss unexpected.”

“There are no evil chances,” he said; “there is no bad luck; they reap as they sow.  No, I don’t go among them to be cheated by their stories, and spend quite unnecessary emotion in sympathizing with them.  You will find it much better for you that I don’t.  I deal with them on a general rule, made, I assure you, not without a great deal of thought.”

“And must it always be so?” I said.  “Is there no way of ameliorating or bringing in a better state of things?”

“It seems not,” he said; “we don’t get ‘no forrarder’ in that direction so far as I can see.”  And then he turned the conversation to general matters.

I retired to my room greatly discouraged that night.  In former ages—­or so one is led to suppose—­and in the lower primitive classes who still linger near the primeval type, action of any kind was, and is, easier than amid the complication of our higher civilization.  A bad man is a distinct entity, against whom you know more or less what steps to take.  A tyrant, an oppressor, a bad landlord, a man who lets miserable tenements at a rack-rent (to come down to particulars), and exposes his wretched tenants to all those abominations of which we have heard so much—­well! he is more or less a satisfactory opponent.  There he is, and there is nothing to be said for him—­down with him! and let there be an end of his wickedness.  But when, on the contrary, you have before you a good man, a just man, who has considered deeply a question which you allow to be full of difficulty; who regrets,