He replied, therefore, after hearing the story, that Elsie had always given trouble.  There seemed to be a kind of natural obliquity about her.  Perfectly unaccountable.  A very dark case.  Never amenable to good influences.  Had sent her good books from the Sunday-school library.  Remembered that she tore out the frontispiece of one of them, and kept it, and flung the book out of the window.  It was a picture of Eve’s temptation; and he recollected her saying that Eve was a good woman,—­and she’d have done just so, if she’d been there.  A very sad child,—­very sad; bad from infancy.—­He had talked himself bold, and said all at once,—­

“Doctor, do you know I am almost ready to accept your doctrine of the congenital sinfulness of human nature?  I am afraid that is the only thing which goes to the bottom of the difficulty.”

The old minister’s face did not open as approvingly as Mr. Fairweather had expected.

“Why, yes,—­well,—­many find comfort in it,—­I believe;—­there is much to be said,—­there are many bad people,—­and bad children,—­I can’t be so sure about bad babies,—­though they cry very malignantly at times,—­especially if they have the stomach-ache.  But I really don’t know how to condemn this poor Elsie; she may have impulses that act in her like instincts in the lower animals, and so not come under the bearing of our ordinary rules of judgment.”

“But this depraved tendency, Doctor,—­this unaccountable perverseness.  My dear Sir, I am afraid your school is in the right about human nature.  Oh, those words of the Psalmist, ‘shapen in iniquity,’ and the rest!  What are we to do with them,—­we who teach that the soul of a child is an unstained white tablet?”

“King David was very subject to fits of humility, and much given to self-reproaches,” said the Doctor, in a rather dry way.  “We owe you and your friends a good deal for calling attention to the natural graces, which, after all, may, perhaps, be considered as another form of manifestation of the divine influence.  Some of our writers have pressed rather too hard on the tendencies of the human soul toward evil as such.  It may be questioned whether these views have not interfered with the sound training of certain young persons, sons of clergymen and others.  I am nearer of your mind about the possibility of educating children so that they shall become good Christians without any violent transition.  That is what I should hope for from bringing them up ’in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.’”

The younger minister looked puzzled, but presently answered,—­

“Possibly we may have called attention to some neglected truths; but, after all, I fear we must go to the old school, if we want to get at the root of the matter.  I know there is an outward amiability about many young persons, some young girls especially, that seems like genuine goodness; but I have been disposed of late to lean toward your view, that these human affections, as we see them in our children,—­ours, I say, though I have not the fearful responsibility of training any of my own,—­are only a kind of disguised and sinful selfishness.”