We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

"And ready to go to the devil straight off, I suppose?" said the Doctor. "His doors are always open."

"You see," said Harry, "things seem to be so arranged in this world that if man, woman or child does wrong or gets out of the way, all society is armed to the teeth to prevent their ever doing right again. Their own flesh and blood pitch into them with reproaches and expostulations, and everybody else looks on them with suspicion, and nobody wants them and nobody dares trust them."

"Just so," said Dr. Campbell, "the world is an army—it can't stop for anything. 'Wounded to the rear,' is the word, and the army must go on and leave the sick and wounded to die or be taken by the enemy. For my part, I never thought Napoleon was so much out of the way when he recommended poisoning the sick and wounded that could not be moved. I think I should prefer to be comfortably and decently poisoned myself in such a case. The world isn't ripe yet for the doctrine; but I think all people who get broken down, and don't keep step physically and morally, had better be killed at once. Then we could get on comfortably, and in a few generations should have a nice population."

"Come, now, Doctor; I'm not going to have that sort of talk," said Eva. "In short, you've got to keep on as you have been doing—working for the wounded in the rear. And now tell me if I could do a better thing for Maggie than keep her here in our house, under my own eye and influence, till she gets quite strong and well, and help her to live down the past?"

"Well, that's a sensible putting of the thing," said Dr. Campbell, "if you will be foolish enough to take the trouble; but I forewarn you that girls that have been through her experiences are troublesome to manage. Their nerves are all in a jangle; they are sore everywhere, and the very good that is in them is turned wrong side outward; and, as you say, the world will be against you, in a general way. Relations, as far as ever I have observed, are rather harder on sinners than anybody else—especially on a woman that goes astray; and next to them sensible, worldly-wise, respectable people—people who live to get rid of trouble, and feel that 'bother' is the sum and substance of evil. Now, taking up a girl like Maggie, you must count on that. Her relations will hinder all they can; and the more respectable they are, the harder they will bear down upon her. Your relations will think you a sentimental little fool, and do all they can to hinder you. The rank and file of comfortable, religious, church-going people will call you imprudent, and only fanatics, like Mr. St. John and Sibyl Selwyn, will understand you or stand by you; and, to crown all, the girl herself is as unreliable as the wind. The evil done to a woman in this kind of life is the derangement of her whole nervous system, so that she is swept by floods of morbid influences, and liable to wild, passionate gusts of feeling. The cessation from this free Bohemian life, with its strong excitements, leaves them in unnatural states of craving for stimulus; and when you have done all you can for them,—in a moment, off they go. That's the reason why most prudent people prefer to wash their hands of them, and stop before they begin."

"It's all very well to talk so, Doctor, if the case related to a stranger; but here is my poor, good Mary, who has been in our family ever since I was a little girl, and has always loved me and been devoted to me—shall I now give her the cold shoulder and not help her in this crisis of her life, because I am afraid of trouble? Isn't it worth trouble, and a great deal of trouble, and a great deal of patience, to save this daughter of hers from ruin? I think it is."

"I think you and your husband will do it," said the Doctor, "because you are just what you are; and I shall help you, because I'm what I am; but, nevertheless, I set the reasonable side before you. I think this Maggie is a fine creature. There are, in a confused way, the beginnings of a great deal that is right, and even noble, in her; but nobody ought to begin with her without taking account of risks."

"Well," said Eva, "you know I am a Christian, and I look in the New Testament for my principles, and there I find it plainly set down that the Lord values one sinner that is brought to repentance more than ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance; and that he would leave the ninety and nine sheep, and go into the wilderness to look up one lost lamb."

"That is the Christian religion, undoubtedly," said Dr. Campbell; "but there is exactly where the Christian religion parts company with worldly prudence. The world and all its institutions are organized and arranged for the strong, the wise, the prudent, and the successful. The weak, the sick, the sinners, and all that sort of thing, are to have as much care as they can without interfering with the healthy and strong. Now, in the good old times of English law, they used to hang summarily anybody that made trouble in society in any way—the woman who stole a loaf of bread, and the man who stole a horse, and the vagrant who picked a pocket; then there was no discussion and no bother about reformation, such as is coming down upon our consciences now-a-days. Good old times those were, when there wasn't any of this gush over the fallen and lost; the slate was wiped clean of all the puzzling sums at the yearly assizes and the account started clear. Now-a-days, there is such a bother about taking care of criminals that an honest man has no decent chance of comfort."