However many instances may be given of the kind before the reader, the moral will be the same. Taking sides involves some penalty which enthusiasts are apt to overlook, and when it arrives ruddy eagerness is apt to turn pale and change into ignoble prudence. Taking the side of honesty or fraud, unpleasantness may come. But on the side of right the consciousness of integrity mitigates regret and commands respect; while the penalties of deceit are intensified by shame and scorn. Many think there is safety in a judicious mixture of good faith and bad, but when the bad is discerned, distrust and contempt are the unevadable consequences. Besides, it takes more trouble to conceal a sinister life than to act uprightly. It is true, an evil policy often succeeds, but the interest of society is to take care that he who does evil shall be overtaken by evil. As this sentiment grows, the chances of illicit success continually decrease. Rascality--refined or coarse--would have fewer adherents if society took as much trouble to secure that the rightdoer shall prosper, as it takes to render the career of the knave precarious. The point of importance, I repeat, is--that persons should remember, or be taught to remember, that the course of right, like the course of wrong, is attended by consequences. Many who are honourably attracted by the right are disappointed at finding that it has its duties as well as its pleasures--which, had they known at first, they would have made up their minds to do them; but not being apprised of them, when they first encounter inconvenience, they think they have been deceived, falter, and sometimes turn from a noble course upon which they had entered. Any one would think there was no great peril to be encountered by taking sides with veracity. Let him avoid the sin of pretension, and see what will happen.