"'You can't fool a cat with talk same as you can a dog.'"
CHAPTER VII
Does man ever reform? Balzac says he doesn't. So far as my experience
goes, it agrees with that of Balzac--a fact the admirers of that author
are at liberty to make what use of they please.
When I was young and accustomed to take my views of life from people who
were older than myself, and who knew better, so they said, I used to
believe that he did. Examples of "reformed characters" were frequently
pointed out to me--indeed, our village, situate a few miles from a small
seaport town, seemed to be peculiarly rich in such. They were, from all
accounts, including their own, persons who had formerly behaved with
quite unnecessary depravity, and who, at the time I knew them, appeared
to be going to equally objectionable lengths in the opposite direction.
They invariably belonged to one of two classes, the low-spirited or the
aggressively unpleasant. They said, and I believed, that they were
happy; but I could not help reflecting how very sad they must have been
before they were happy.
One of them, a small, meek-eyed old man with a piping voice, had been
exceptionally wild in his youth. What had been his special villainy I
could never discover. People responded to my inquiries by saying that he
had been "Oh, generally bad," and increased my longing for detail by
adding that little boys ought not to want to know about such things.
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