One day we were discussing our favorite characters in history, just as you and I used to do at Bellisle, and David was very much amused when I told him that those I most admired were Aristides, St. Paul, and General Washington.  His favorites are Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Washington.  So we agree about one of them, but differ widely as to the other two.  David absolutely laughed when I mentioned St. Paul with Aristides, and seemed to think that I only named him because I had been taught that it was right to do so.  I asked if he had ever read the life of Paul with attention, and this question appeared to amuse him still more; and then he told me he had been through the Book of Acts in Sunday school, and had learned several chapters in it by heart; but for all that he had never thought of St. Paul as a hero.

I asked him what made a hero,—­if it was not courage in the time of danger.

“Yes,” he said, “but it must be in action, not in words.”

I reminded him then of some of the Grecian orators, who made themselves immortal by their speeches, when their country was in danger, and asked if their words were not considered heroic.

This question puzzled him a little, and he was not willing to own that it was a similar case, but I defied him to find a Greek or Roman who had hazarded his life more freely for the good of others than St. Paul.  Then I turned to the chapter containing Paul’s speech before Agrippa, and asked him where he could match its eloquence.  Then I read over the account of the sufferings of this brave Apostle, and demanded of David whether any other man could give a catalogue of so many and great evils so manfully borne.  Finally, we reviewed the story of Paul’s shipwreck at Melita, and David was forced to avow that my hero showed a calmness and self-possession in that hour of danger which few mariners display.

If I only had had you to help me argue the point, I should have made him own that Paul was very far superior to Alexander the Great.

You must not think, from what I say of David, that New England boys are not as piously brought up as the Virginians; for I believe the generality of them are much better instructed; but you know we have had peculiar advantages, and David has been but little at home with his mother, and his father cannot teach him what he does not himself know.  David will be a good man one of these days, and would be better now if he had not the idea that there was something manly in being wicked.  I am so glad that I was not brought up to think the same, for I begin to see how true it is, that, the older we grow, the more difficult it is for us to change our course.

There is poor Moody Dick!  I really believe he would like to be a better man.  They say that he is not more than twenty-five, but I thought that he was over thirty, for his face is wrinkled already, and there are gray hairs around his temples.