to just now as the examination of our consciences.  To disregard the examination of our consciences is a terrible thing, of which it is impossible to foresee the end; on the other hand, to practise it is most admirable, for by this means we can on the spot attain filial piety and fidelity to our masters.  Virtue and vice are the goals to which the examination and non-examination of our consciences lead.  As it has been rightly said, benevolence and malice are the two roads which man follows.  Upon this subject I have a terrible and yet a very admirable story to tell you.  Although I dare say you are very drowsy, I must beg you to listen to me.

In a certain part of the country there was a well-to-do farmer, whose marriage had brought him one son, whom he petted beyond all measure, as a cow licks her calf.  So by degrees the child became very sly:  he used to pull the horses’ tails, and blow smoke into the bulls’ nostrils, and bully the neighbours’ children in petty ways and make them cry.  From a peevish child he grew to be a man, and unbearably undutiful to his parents.  Priding himself on a little superior strength, he became a drunkard and a gambler, and learned to wrestle at fairs.  He would fight and quarrel for a trifle, and spent his time in debauchery and riotous living.  If his parents remonstrated with him, he would raise his voice and abuse them, using scurrilous language.  “It’s all very well your abusing me for being dissolute and disobedient.  But, pray, who asked you to bring me into the world?  You brought me into the world, and I have to thank you for its miseries; so now, if you hate dissolute people, you had better put me back where I came from, and I shall be all right again.”  This was the sort of insolent answer he would give his parents, who, at their wits’ end, began to grow old in years.  And as he by degrees grew more and more of a bully, unhappy as he made them, still he was their darling, and they could not find it in their hearts to turn him out of the house and disinherit him.  So they let him pursue his selfish course; and he went on from worse to worse, knocking people down, breaking their arms, and getting up great disturbances.  It is unnecessary to speak of his parents’ feelings.  Even his relations and friends felt as if nails were being hammered into their breasts.  He was a thoroughly wicked man.

Now no one is from his mother’s womb so wicked as this; but those who persist in selfishness lose their senses, and gradually reach this pitch of wickedness.  What a terrible thing is this throwing away of our hearts!

Well, this man’s relations and friends very properly urged his parents to disown him; but he was an only child, and so his parents, although they said, “To-day we really will disinherit him,” or “To-morrow we really will break off all relations with him,” still it was all empty talk; and the years and months passed by, until the scapegrace reached his twenty-sixth year, having heaped wickedness