"We—ell," drawled the Squire, "that isn't exactly the way I was going to finish off, but I guess it's pretty near the truth. It don't sound well either, does it?"
"Brother Prymm?" said Deacon Bates, and the champion of orthodoxy responded to the invitation by saying,
"The meek are undoubtedly those who follow the non-resistant injunctions which are found everywhere in the New Testament; they are the men who when one cheek is struck turn the other also, who render not railing for railing."
"And who, when the coat is taken, will offer the cloak also," added Captain Maile.
"Certainly," said Mr. Prymm, with rather a wry face, "though I cannot, with any present light, see how the latter course would be practical and judicious. The other injunctions are but amplifications of the inspired saying, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath,' but how property rights can be maintained at all, if the injunction quoted by Captain Maile were followed, I am unable to see."
"It wouldn't work in the steamboat business," declared Mr. Buffle. "It's hard enough to get the worth of your money, even when men promise to pay; but if a man were to understand that by stealing one of my tug-boats he would have a right to expect a first-class lake packet as a present, I'd have to go out of business within a fortnight."
"I'm inclined to think the passage in question must be an interpolation by one of Christ's reporters," said President Lottson, who had been taking a cautious course of Matthew Arnold.
"Why, if I were to live up to that injunction," said Builder Stott, "folks would want to modify their house plans every day. In fact they do it now. The moment I try to oblige a man by giving a little more than his contract calls for, he wants something else. Women in particular are perfectly awful that way; they——"
"Ladies are present," remarked Lawyer Scott, who was considerable of a ladies' man.
"Just think of a broker trying to do business in that way!" exclaimed Broker Whilcher.