"If the Supreme Ruler is not willing there should be this class of people, Eleanor, how come they to exist?"
"You are too good a philosopher, Mr. Carlisle, not to know that men are free agents, and that God leaves them the exercise of their free agency, even though others as well as themselves suffer by it. I suppose, if those a little above them in the social scale had lived according to the gospel rule, this class of people never would have existed."
"What a reformer you would make, Eleanor!"
"I should not suit you? Yes—I do not believe in any radical way of reform but one."
"And that is, what?—counsellor."
"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you."
"Radical enough! You must reform the reformers first, I suppose you know."
"I know it."
"Then, hard as it is for me to believe it, you do not go to Field-Lane by way of penance?"
"The penance would be, to make me stay away."