“My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was when you made me visible.  It gives me an inconceivable advantage.  Now I can look you straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer at you, jeer at you, sneer at you; and you know what eloquence there is in visible gesture and expression, more especially when the effect is heightened by audible speech.  I shall always address you henceforth in your o-w-n s-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l—­baby!”

I let fly with the coal-hod.  No result.  My lord said: 

“Come, come!  Remember the flag of truce!”

“Ah, I forgot that.  I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a novelty.  The idea of a civil conscience!  It is a good joke; an excellent joke.  All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging, badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages!  Yes; and always in a sweat about some poor little insignificant trifle or other—­destruction catch the lot of them, I say!  I would trade mine for the smallpox and seven kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance.  Now tell me, why is it that a conscience can’t haul a man over the coals once, for an offense, and then let him alone?  Why is it that it wants to keep on pegging at him, day and night and night and day, week in and week out, forever and ever, about the same old thing?  There is no sense in that, and no reason in it.  I think a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the very dirt itself.”

“Well, we like it; that suffices.”

“Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a man?”

That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this reply: 

“No, sir.  Excuse me.  We do it simply because it is ‘business.’  It is our trade.  The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely disinterested agents.  We are appointed by authority, and haven’t anything to say in the matter.  We obey orders and leave the consequences where they belong.  But I am willing to admit this much:  we do crowd the orders a trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time.  We enjoy it.  We are instructed to remind a man a few times of an error; and I don’t mind acknowledging that we try to give pretty good measure.  And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but we do haze him!  I have consciences to come all the way from China and Russia to see a person of that kind put through his paces, on a special occasion.  Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally crippled a mulatto baby; the news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit another sin if the consciences didn’t flock from all over the earth to enjoy the fun and help his master exorcise him.  That man walked the floor in torture for forty-eight hours, without eating or sleeping, and then blew his brains out.  The child was perfectly well again in three weeks.”