men in this life.  And it is for your interest to be contented rather with a humble station well filled, than to shock every body with failures, the more conspicuous by contrast with the ostentation of their promises.”  John made no answer, he looked very sulky at the moment, and I am in high hopes that I have saved a near relation from making a fool of himself by attempting what is as much beyond his capacity as an epic poem.  Others, however, tell me that he is meditating a revenge upon me and the whole club.  But let this be as it may, liberavi animam meam; and, as you see, have run some risk with a wish to diminish the amount of homicide.  But the other case still more forcibly illustrates my virtue.  A man came to me as a candidate for the place of my servant, just then vacant.  He had the reputation of having dabbled a little in our art; some said not without merit.  What startled me, however, was, that he supposed this art to be part of his regular duties in my service.  Now that was a thing I would not allow; so I said at once, “Richard (or James, as the case might be,) you misunderstand my character.  If a man will and must practise this difficult (and allow me to add, dangerous) branch of art—­if he has an overruling genius for it, why, he might as well pursue his studies whilst living in my service as in another’s.  And also, I may observe, that it can do no harm either to himself or to the subject on whom he operates, that he should be guided by men of more taste than himself.  Genius may do much, but long study of the art must always entitle a man to offer advice.  So far I will go—­general principles I will suggest.  But as to any particular case, once for all I will have nothing to do with it.  Never tell me of any special work of art you are meditating—­I set my face against it in toto.  For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.  Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop.  Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time. Principiis obsta—­that’s my rule.”  Such was my speech, and I have always acted up to it; so if that is not being virtuous, I should be glad to know what is.  But now about the dinner and the club.  The club was not particularly of my creation; it arose pretty much as other similar associations, for the propagation of truth and the communication of new ideas, rather from the necessities of things than upon any one man’s suggestion.  As to the dinner, if any man more than another could be held responsible for that, it was a member known amongst us by the name of Toad-in-the-hole.  He was so called from his gloomy misanthropical disposition, which led him into constant disparagements of all modern murders as vicious abortions, belonging to no authentic