The mistress.  I have noticed one thing, that the most popular persons in society are those who take the world as it is, find the least fault, and have no hobbies.  They are always wanted to dinner.

The young lady.  And the other kind always appear to me to want a dinner.

The fire-tender.  It seems to me that the real reason why reformers and some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb our serenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings.  It is only now and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor, of investigation and regeneration.  At other times they rather hate those who disturb their quiet.

Our next door.  Professional reformers and philanthropists are insufferably conceited and intolerant.

The mistress.  Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reform or a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.

Mandeville.  I attended a protracted convention of reformers of a certain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with a tableful of them.  It was one of those country dinners accompanied with green tea.  Every one disagreed with every one else, and you would n’t wonder at it, if you had seen them.  They were people with whom good food wouldn’t agree.  George Thompson was expected at the convention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in the talk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned that George took snuff,—­when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up from the table.  One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbons in her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared that she was perfectly disgusted, and did n’t want to hear him speak.  In the course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children, and how to administer punishment.  I was quite taken by the remark of a thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in a harsh, deep bass voice, “Punish ’em in love!” It sounded as if he had said, “Shoot ’em on the spot!”

The parson.  I supposed you would say that he was a minister.  There is another thing about those people.  I think they are working against the course of nature.  Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform.  She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.  There’s a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued for many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nail resume its old regularity.  You see the same thing in trees whose bark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer’s intimacy with squashes.  The bad traits in character are passed down from generation to generation with as much care as the good ones.  Nature, unaided, never reforms anything.

Mandeville.  Is that the essence of Calvinism?

The parson.  Calvinism has n’t any essence, it’s a fact.