"That is my name for the principle that lies hidden in weak human nature--the principle of antagonism to happiness, which, with unholy impishness, tempts man to his own destruction. Don't you think it an apt name?" "I don't believe I follow you." "Then let me explain. Did you never, when standing upon some high point, become conscious of an influence irresistibly urging you to cast yourself down? As you listened--fascinated and horrified--to the voice, did you not feel an almost overwhelming curiosity to see what the sensations accompanying such a fall would be--to know the extremest terror of it? Your tempter was the _Imp of the Perverse_. "Did you never feel a sense of glee to find that something you had said or done had shocked someone whose good opinion you should have desired? Did you never feel a desire to depart from a course you knew to be to your interest and follow one that would bring certain harm--possible disaster--upon you? Did you never feel like breaking loose from all the restraints which you knew to be for your good--throwing off every shackle of propriety, and right, and decency?--Mr. Graham, did you never feel like throwing yourself to the devil for no reason at all other than the desire to be perverse? Could any desire be more impish?--I will illustrate by my own case, I am in one respect not like other men. An exceptionally high-strung nervous temperament makes alcoholic stimulants poison to me. It works like madness in my brain and in my blood. The glass of wine that you can take with pleasure and perhaps with benefit drives me wild--makes me commit all manner of reckless deeds that in my sane moments fill me with sorrow!--and sometimes produces physical illness followed by depression of spirits, horrible in the extreme. More--an inherited desire for stimulation and the exhilaration produced by wine, makes it well nigh impossible for me, once I have yielded my will so far as to take the single glass, to resist the second, which is more than apt to be followed by a third, and so on. I am fully aware therefore, of the danger that lies for me in a thing harmless to many men, and that my only safety and happiness and the happiness of those far dearer to me than myself, lies in the strictest, most rigid abstinence. Knowing all this, one would suppose that I would fly from this temptation as it were the plague. I do generally. At present, several years have passed since I yielded an inch. But there have been times--and there may be times again--when the Imp of the Perverse will command me to drink and, fully aware of the risk, I _will_ drink, and will go down into hell for a longer or shorter period afterward."