They are scared and do not take things seriously; they do not contradict you on this propriety and that belief, because they care nothing about proprieties and beliefs; they love nothing, hate nothing, and are as easy to wear as old slippers. The strict moralist and pietest, on the other hand, is as hard and unyielding as a boot just from the hands of the maker; you must conform to his model, or he will conscientiously pinch your moral corns in a most grievous manner; he cannot grant you a hair's-breadth without bursting his uppers and endangering his sole. But pleasant as our corrupt friends are apt to be, you must not trust your affections and your happiness to them, or you may find that you have cast your pearls before the unclean. These reflections are not perhaps of the newest, but they are just as true as when they were first promulgated. Concerning the possible flirtation to which I have alluded Doctor Ravenel was constantly ill at ease. If he found on returning from a walk that Lillie had received a call from the Colonel during his absence, he was secretly worried and sometimes openly peevish for hours afterward. He would break out upon that sort of people, though always without mentioning names; and the absent Carter would receive a severe lashing over the back of some gentleman whom Lillie had known or heard of in New Orleans. "I don't see how I ever lived among such a disreputable population," he would say. "I look upon myself sometimes as a man who has just come from a twenty-five year's residence among the wealthy and genteel pirates of the Isle of Pines. I actually feel that I have no claims upon a decent society to be received as a respectable character. If a New Boston man should refuse to shake hands with me on the ground that my associations had not been what they should be, I could not find it in my heart to disagree with him. Among that people I used to wonder at the patience of the Almighty. I obtained a conception of his long-suffering mercies such as I could not have obtained in a virtuous community. Just look at that Colonel McAllister, who used to be the brightest ornament of New Orleans fashion. A mass of corruption! The immoral odor of him must have been an offense to the heavens. I can imagine the angels and glorified spirits looking down at him with disgust, and actually holding their noses, like the king in Orcagna's picture when he comes across the dead body. There never was a subject brought into our dissecting room so abominable to the physical senses as that man was to the moral sense." "Oh, papa, don't!" implored Miss Lillie. "You talk most horridly when you get started on certain subjects."