At Odds With The World

But he soon began to learn how serious, how disheartening, is the condition of one who finds society arrayed against him.

It is the fashion to inveigh against the "cold and pitiless world"; but the world has often much excuse for maintaining this character. As society is now constituted, the consequences of wrong-doing are usually terrible and greatly to be dreaded; and all who have unhealthful cravings for forbidden things should be made to realize this. Society very naturally treats harshly those who permit their pleasures and passions to endanger its very existence. People who have toilsomely and patiently erected their homes and placed therein their treasures do not tolerate with much equanimity those who appear to have no other calling than that of recklessly playing with fire. The well-to-do, conservative world has no inclination to make things pleasant for those who propose to gratify themselves at any and every cost; and if the culprit pleads, "I did not realize--I meant no great harm," the retort comes back, "But you do the harm; you endanger everything. If you have not sense or principle enough to act wisely and well, do not expect us to risk our fortunes with either fools or knaves." And the man or the woman who has preferred pleasure or passing gratification or transient advantage to that priceless possession, a good name, has little ground for complaint. If society readily condoned those grave offences which threaten chaos, thousands who are now restrained by salutary fear would act out disastrously the evil lurking in their hearts. As long as the instinct of self-preservation remains, the world will seem cold and pitiless.