“Oh, I was responsible too; but I seemed to be the only one ashamed of my share in the business.” “If you were the only one conscious of it, your merit wasn't very great,” suggested the minister. “Well, I should like the others to be conscious of it too. That's why I want you to preach my sermon. I want you to tell your people and my people that the one who buys sin or shame, or corruption of any sort, is as guilty as the one who sells it.” “It isn't a new theory,” said Sewell, still refusing to give up his ironical tone. “It was discovered some time ago that this was so before God.” “Well, I've just discovered that it ought to be so before man,” said Evans. “Still you're not the first,” said Sewell. “Yes,” said the editor, “I think I am, from my peculiar standpoint. The other day a friend of mine--an upright, just, worthy man, no one more so--was telling me of a shocking instance of our national corruption. He had just got home from Europe, and he had brought a lot of dutiable things, that a customs inspector passed for a trifling sum. That was all very well, but the inspector afterwards came round with a confidential claim for a hundred dollars, and the figures to show that the legal duties would have been eight or ten times as much. My friend was glad to pay the hundred dollars; but he defied me to name any country in Europe where such a piece of official rascality was possible. He said it made him ashamed of America!” Evans leaned his head back against his chair and laughed. “Yes,” said Sewell with a sigh, and no longer feigning lightness. “That's awful.” “Well, now,” said Evans, “don't you think it your duty to help people realise that they can't regard such transactions _de haut en bas_, if they happen to have taken part in them? I have heard of the shameful condition of things down in Maine, where I'm told the French Canadians who've come in regularly expect to sell their votes to the highest bidder at every election. Since my new system of ethics occurred to me, I've fancied that there must have always been a shameful state of things there, if Americans could grow up in the willingness to buy votes. I want to have people recognise that there is no superiority for them in such an affair; that there's nothing but inferiority; that the man who has the money and the wit to corrupt is a far baser rascal than the man who has the ignorance and the poverty to be corrupted. I would make this principle seek out every weak spot, every sore spot in the whole social constitution. I'm sick to death of the frauds that we practise upon ourselves in order to be able to injure others. Just consider the infernal ease of mind in which men remain concerning men's share in the social evil----” “Ah, my dear friend, you can't expect me to consider _that_ in my pulpit!” cried the minister.