"Which is better off, the roving young fellow who is sowing his wild oats, or the man who has settled down, and become a respectable landowner with a good house over his head?"
"And begun to propagate his species? Well, you have me there, sir, as far as this life is concerned; but you will confess that the barnacle's history proves that all crawling grubs don't turn into butterflies."
"I daresay the barnacle turns into what is best for him; at all events, what he deserves. That rule of yours will apply to him, to whomsoever it will not."
"And so does penance for the sins of his youth, as some of us are to do in the next world?"
"Perhaps yes; perhaps no; perhaps neither."
"Do you speak of us, or the barnacle?"
"Of both."
"I am glad of that; for on the popular notion of our being punished a million years hence for what we did when we were lads, I never could see anything but a misery and injustice in our having come into the world at all."
"I can," said the Major quietly.
"Of course I meant nothing rude: but I had to buy my experience, and paid for it dearly enough in folly."