“‘You ain’t altered a bit, Sam,’ said she, for the starch was coming out, ‘from what you was, only you are more forrider. Our young men, when they go abroad, come back and talk so free and easy, and take such liberties, and say it’s the fashion in Paris, it’s quite scandalous. Now, if you dare to do the like again, I’ll never speak to you the longest day I ever live, I’ll go right off and leave, see if I don’t.’
“‘Oh, I see, I have offended you,’ sais I, ‘you are not in a humour to consent now, so I will call again some other time.’
“‘This lecture on botany must now be postponed,’ she said, ‘for the hour is out some time ago. If you will be seated, I will set the young students at embroidery instead, and return for a short time, for it does seem so nateral to see you, Sam, you saucy boy,’ and she pinched my ear, ‘it reminds one, don’t it, of bygones?’ and she hung her head a one side, and looked sentimental.
“‘Of by-gone larks,’ said I.
“‘Hush, Sam,’ she said, ‘don’t talk so loud, that’s a dear soul. Oh, if anybody had come in just then, and caught us.’
(“Us,” thinks I to myself, “I thought you had no objection to it, and only struggled enough for modesty-like; and I did think you would have said, caught you.”)
“‘I would have been ruinated for ever and ever, and amen, and the college broke up, and my position in the literary, scientific, and intellectual world scorched, withered, and blasted for ever. Ain’t my cheek all burning, Sam? it feels as if it was all a-fire;’ and she put it near enough for me to see, and feel tempted beyond my strength. ‘Don’t it look horrid inflamed, dear?’ And she danced out of the room, as if she was skipping a rope.
“Well, well,” sais I, when she took herself off. “What a world this is! This is evangelical learning; girls are taught in one room to faint or scream if they see a man, as if he was an incarnation of sin; and yet they are all educated and trained to think the sole object of life is to win, not convert, but win one of these sinners. In the next room propriety, dignity, and decorum, romp with a man in a way to make even his sallow face blush. Teach a child there is harm in everything, however innocent, and so soon as it discovers the cheat, it won’t see no sin in anything. That’s the reason deacons’ sons seldom turn out well, and preachers’ daughters are married through a window. Innocence is the sweetest thing in the world, and there is more of it than folks generally imagine. If you want some to transplant, don’t seek it in the enclosures of cant, for it has only counterfeit ones, but go to the gardens of truth and of sense. Coërced innocence is like an imprisoned lark, open the door and it’s off for ever. The bird that roams through the sky and the groves unrestrained knows how to dodge the hawk and protect itself, but the caged one, the moment it leaves its bars and bolts behind, is pounced upon by the fowler or the vulture.
“Puritans, whether in or out of the church (for there is a whole squad of ’em in it, like rats in a house who eat up its bread and undermine its walls), make more sinners than they save by a long chalk. They ain’t content with real sin, the pattern ain’t sufficient for a cloak, so they sew on several breadths of artificial offences, and that makes one big enough to wrap round them, and cover their own deformity. It enlarges the margin, and the book, and gives more texts.
“Their eyes are like the great magnifier at the Polytechnic, that shows you many-headed, many-armed, many-footed, and many-tailed awful monsters in a drop of water, which were never intended for us to see, or Providence would have made our eyes like Lord Rosse’s telescope (which discloses the secrets of the moon), and given us springs that had none of these canables in ’em. Water is our drink, and it was made for us to take when we were dry, and be thankful. After I first saw one of these drops, like an old cheese chock full of livin’ things, I couldn’t drink nothing but pure gin or brandy for a week. I was scared to death. I consaited when I went to bed I could audibly feel these critters fightin’ like Turks and minin’ my inerds, and I got narvous lest my stomach like a citadel might be blowed up and the works destroyed. It was frightful.