“To hear Peter talk you would think the whole of us ought to be sentenced to life terms,” laughed Watts.  “I believe it’s only an attempt on his part to increase the practice of lawyers.”

“Do you really think people are so bad, Peter?” asked Leonore, sadly.

“No.  I have not, ten times in my life, met a man whom I should now call bad.  I have met men whom I thought so, but when I knew them better I found the good in them more than balancing the evil.  Our mistake is in supposing that some men are ‘good’ and others ‘bad,’ and that a sharp line can be drawn between them.  The truth is, that every man has both qualities in him and in very few does the evil overbalance the good.  I marvel at the goodness I find in humanity, when I see the temptation and opportunity there is to do wrong.”

“Some men are really depraved, though,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.

“Yes,” said madame.  “Think of those strikers!”

Peter felt a thrill of pleasure pass through him, but he did not show it.  “Let me tell you something in connection with that.  A high light in place of a dark shadow.  There was an attempt to convict some of the strikers, but it failed, for want of positive evidence.  The moral proof, however, against a fellow named Connelly was so strong that there could be no doubt that he was guilty.  Two years later that man started out in charge of a long express, up a seven-mile grade, where one of our railroads crosses the Alleghanies.  By the lay of the land every inch of that seven miles of track can be seen throughout its entire length, and when he had pulled half way up, he saw a section of a freight train coming down the grade at a tremendous speed.  A coupling had broken, and this part of the train was without a man to put on the brakes.  To go on was death.  To stand still was the same.  No speed which he could give his train by backing would enable it to escape those uncontrolled cars.  He sent his fireman back to the first car, with orders to uncouple the engine.  He whistled ‘on brakes’ to his train, so that it should be held on the grade safely.  And he, and the engine alone, went on up that grade, and met that flying mass of freight.  He saved two hundred people’s lives.  Yet that man, two years before, had tried to burn alive forty of his fellow-men.  Was that man good or bad?”

“Really, chum, if you ask it as a conundrum, I give it up.  But there are thoroughly and wholly good things in this world, and one of them is this stuffing.  Would it be possible for a fellow to have a second help?”

Peter smiled.  “Jenifer always makes the portions according to what is to follow, and I don’t believe he’ll think you had better.  Jenifer, can Mr. D’Alloi have some more stuffing?”

“Yissah,” said Jenifer, grinning the true darkey grin, “if de gentmun want’t sell his ap’tite foh a mess ob potash.”

“Never mind,” said Watts.  “I’m not a dyspeptic, and so don’t need potash.  But you might wrap the rest up in a piece of newspaper, and I’ll take it home.”