It is a principle of mine never to push anything over the edge. When I am successful, in any argument, my one dread is of humiliating my opponent. Indeed I cannot bear it. It humiliates me. And if you want him to think about anything, you must leave him room, and not give him such associations with the question that the very idea of it will be painful and irritating to him. Let him have a hand in the convincing of himself. I have been surprised sometimes to see my own arguments come up fresh and green, when I thought the fowls of the air had devoured them up. When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he is sure of just one ally, the same that Faust had in fighting Gretchen’s brother—that is, the Devil. But God and good men are against him. So I never follow up a victory of that kind, for, as I said, the defeat of the intellect is not the object in fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but the acceptance of the heart. In this case, therefore, I drew back. “May I ask for whom you are making that coffin?” “For a sister of my own, sir.” “I’m sorry to hear that.” “There’s no occasion. I can’t say I’m sorry, though she was one of the best women I ever knew.” “Why are you not sorry, then? Life’s a good thing in the main, you will allow.” “Yes, when it’s endurable at all. But to have a brute of a husband coming home at any hour of the night or morning, drunk upon the money she had earned by hard work, was enough to take more of the shine out of things than church-going on Sundays could put in again, regular as she was, poor woman! I’m as glad as her brute of a husband, that she’s out of his way at last.” “How do you know he’s glad of it?” “He’s been drunk every night since she died.” “Then he’s the worse for losing her?” “He may well be. Crying like a hypocrite, too, over his own work!” “A fool he must be. A hypocrite, perhaps not. A hypocrite is a terrible name to give. Perhaps her death will do him good.” “He doesn’t deserve to be done any good to. I would have made this coffin for him with a world of pleasure.” “I never found that I deserved anything, not even a coffin. The only claim that I could ever lay to anything was that I was very much in want of it.” The old smile returned—as much as to say, “That’s your little game in the church.” But I resolved to try nothing more with him at present; and indeed was sorry that I had started the new question at all, partly because thus I had again given him occasion to feel that he knew better than I did, which was not good either for him or for me in our relation to each other. “This has been a fine old room once,” I said, looking round the workshop. “You can see it wasn’t a workshop always, sir. Many a grand dinner-party has sat down in this room when it was in its glory. Look at the chimney-piece there.” “I have been looking at it,” I said, going nearer. “It represents the four quarters of the world, you see.”