“Well, we’ve been looking for an assistant engineer, and there have been the Lord only knows how many applicants. One fellow impressed me very well; he seemed as straight as a string; honest face, thoroughly decent-looking fellow. He was an Englishman, but his references for three years were American. So much the better, of course. I was going to engage him, when, bless my soul, if he didn’t begin to stammer out something about having no references from ‘Home’ (‘’ome,’ he called it), because he ‘’adn’t been over steady,’ but he’d signed the pledge, and ‘he wasn’t afraid of drink any more.’ I didn’t hire him. Now, I call that truth not governed by the law of benefit.” “You don’t discriminate between being truthful and telling the truth,” said William West. “You hadn’t asked him if he had ever drank. I don’t believe you lost much, in not engaging him, poor fellow.” “Oh, Billy, I think it was rather fine in him,” Amy protested, looking up from her notes. “I don’t see anything fine,” the minister said simply. “In the first place, there was a lack of reserve, a lack of privacy, in rushing into confession, which betrays the weak nature. There was also self-consciousness, in dwelling on his sin. And in the third place”-- “This sounds like a sermon: firstly--secondly”--Amy murmured, signing her name to her thanks for the third asparagus fork. --“in the third place, if the man has reformed, there was an essential untruth in posing as a sinner.” “Well, I don’t quite agree with that,” began Mrs. Paul. “He’s right; he’s right,” John Paul declared. “I say, West, suppose we went about confessing some of our college performances?” The senior warden of St. James grinned, but his wife looked displeased. “I don’t believe you ever did anything very bad, John; but if you did, I think you should have confessed to me.” “I stole some signs, Kate,” he told her; “can you forgive me?” Amy, listening, smiling, said with that charming sidewise glance at her lover: “Cousin Kate is quite right. I should never forgive a man who didn’t tell me everything! Billy, come here and confess. Have you ever done anything wicked?” “We are all miserable sinners,” John Paul murmured. “I say so publicly every Sunday”-- “But you don’t specify!” the minister reminded him, with a laugh. “Yes; but, Billy,” Amy Townsend insisted, “doesn’t it say somewhere that ‘confession is good for the soul’?” “Perhaps it is,” he said dryly, “but, generally speaking, it’s mighty bad for the mind.” There was an outcry at this from the two women. “Of course,” Mrs. Paul said, “simply gossiping about one’s self isn’t confession; but don’t you think, Mr. West, in the really deep relations of life, between friend and friend, or husband and wife, there should be no reserves?”