_Mr. Forester._ To borrow an allegory from Homer: I would say society is composed of two urns, one of good, and one of evil. I will suppose that every individual of the human species receives from his natal genius a little phial, containing one drop of a fluid, which shall be evil, if poured into the urn of evil, and good if into that of good. If you were proceeding to the station of the urns with ten thousand persons, every one of them predetermined to empty his phial into the urn of evil, which I fear is too true a picture of the practice of society, should you consider their example, if you were hemmed in in the centre of them, a sufficient excuse for not breaking from them, and approaching the neglected urn? Would you say, “The urn of good will derive little increase from my solitary drop, and one more or less will make very little difference in the urn of ill; I will spare myself trouble, do as the world does, and let the urn of good take its chance, from those who can approach it with less difficulty”? No: you would rather say, “That neglected urn contains the hopes of the human species: little, indeed, is the addition I can make to it, but it will be good as far as it goes”; and if, on approaching the urn, you should find it not so empty as you had anticipated, if the genius appointed to guard it should say to you, “There is enough in this urn already to allow a reasonable expectation that it will one day be full, and yet it has only accumulated drop by drop through the efforts of individuals, who broke through the pale and pressure of the multitude, and did not despair of human virtue”; would you not feel ten thousand times repaid for the difficulties you had overcome, and the scoffs of the fools and slaves you had abandoned, by the single reflection that would then rush upon your mind, _I am one of these_? _Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Gad, very likely: I never considered the subject in that light. You have made no allowance for the mixture of good and evil, which I think the fairest state of the case. It seems to me, that the world always goes on pretty much in one way. People eat, drink, and sleep, make merry with their friends, get as much money as they can, marry when they can afford it, take care of their children because they are their own, are thought well of while they live in proportion to the depth of their purse, and when they die, are sure of as good a character on their tombstones as the bellman and stonemason can afford for their money. _Mr. Forester._ Such is the multitude; but there are noble exceptions to this general littleness. _Sir Telegraph Paxarett._ Now and then an original genius strikes out of the common track; but there are two ways of doing that—into a worse as well as a better.