"To be plain," answered Mr. Shillabeer, guiltily, "I was full of rather gloomy thoughts along of it being the death-day of the wife. And I said, in my darkness, that self-slaughter might not be all bad, if a man had outlived his value. And she reproved me--yes, she said the word in season." "You oughtn’t to think of such things, Shillabeer," declared Mr. Moses. "I know it, Charles; yet thoughts will come over the mind unbidden. But leave that." "As to David, he’s easier to talk sense to than you might think," added Crocker. "I risked it once, and he took it in a very manly spirit that made me respect him more than ever. But I doubt he’s forgotten it all long ago. Why for don’t you try, Moses? You’re a light among us and carry the weight of the church on your shoulders. Catch the man coming out one Sunday and go a bit of the way back-along with him, and some of us will take Madge and Rhoda out of earshot." "No," answered the shoemaker. "Don’t ask me to attempt any such a thing. You can’t alter it, and they can’t alter it. ’Tis in them: they’re built so. Just a pinch of salt makes or mars a stew, and just a pinch of character makes or mars a home. If we even knew exactly what ’twas, we couldn’t alter it. You can’t pull out a bit of human nature, like a hollow tooth. Just an over-seasoning of pepper in a man, or a pinch of softness in a woman, may spoil all. It takes terrible little to wreck a home, and I’ve known large tragedies rise up out of nought but a taste." "That’s true," declared Bartley. "A man with a failing, or a fancy, as wouldn’t count against him in one woman’s eyes, may come to eternal smash on it if he happens to wed with another woman. ’Tis the little twists of character that lead to the biggest troubles, as the acorn breeds the oak." Mr. Shillabeer obliged with an instance. "I knowed a very good Christian girl who was a moderate drinker and never dreamed of taking a thimble too much afore she married. And she never would have done so afterwards, but for the bad luck of her husband being a furious teetotaller. I’ve seed that man talk about drink till you’d think he was blind drunk himself! And so he was--drunk with rage at the thought of there being such a thing as drink in the universe. And what come of it? She took to drink, that woman did, driven to it, you might say, out of sheer spite; and the man catched his only son market merry at ten years old; and he dashed him to the earth in his righteous indignation and broke the poor child’s arm in two places."