"You do not appear to have had a single redeeming feature," said Toppleton, some disgust manifested on his countenance, for to tell the truth he was thoroughly disappointed to learn that the spirit's moral cowardice had brought his trouble upon him.
"Oh, yes, I had," replied the spirit hastily, as if anxious to rehabilitate himself in his host's eyes. "I was strong in one particular. In matters pertaining to religion I was unusually strong. My very meekness rendered me so."
"Your kind of meekness isn't the kind that inherits the earth, though," retorted Toppleton. "Meekness that means the abandonment of right for the sake of peace is a crime. Meekness that subverts self-respect is an offence against society. Meekness which is synonymous with pusillanimity is not the meekness which develops into true religious feeling."
"No; that is very true," said the spirit. "I do not deny one word of what you say; but I, nevertheless, was an extremely religious boy, nor did I change when I entered upon man's estate; and it is that strong religious fervour with which my spirit is still imbued that has made my cup so much the more bitter, since, as I have hinted, he who robbed me of my body has written pamphlets of the most shocking sort over my name, denouncing the Church and attempting to upset the whole fabric of Christianity."
"I am anxious to get to the details of the robbery," said Toppleton, with a smile of sympathy; "pass over your extreme youth and come to that."
"I will do so," replied the spirit, returning to the figure Toppleton had provided for him, the smoke having by this time evacuated his new habitation. "I will omit the details of my life up to the time when I became a lawyer and—"
"You don't mean to say you ever became a lawyer?" interrupted Hopkins, incredulously.
"Why, certainly," replied the spirit; "I became a lawyer, and at the time I lost my body I was getting to be considered a famous one."
"How on earth, with your meekness, did you ever have the courage to take up a profession that requires nerve and an aggressive nature if success is to be sought after?" asked the American.
"It was that same fatal inability to make up my mind to do what my conscience prompted. It was another one of my compromises," returned the spirit, sadly. "I couldn't make up my mind between the pulpit and literature, so I compromised on the law, mastered it to a sufficient extent to be admitted to practice, and opened an office—the same room, by the way, as that in which you and I are seated at this moment."