"It is a terribly sad reflection," remarked MacShaughnassy, musingly;
"but what a desperately dull place this earth would be if it were not for
our friends the bad people. Do you know," he continued, "when I hear of
folks going about the world trying to reform everybody and make them
good, I get positively nervous. Once do away with sin, and literature
will become a thing of the past. Without the criminal classes we authors
would starve."
"I shouldn't worry," replied Jephson, drily; "one half mankind has been
'reforming' the other half pretty steadily ever since the Creation, yet
there appears to be a fairly appreciable amount of human nature left in
it, notwithstanding. Suppressing sin is much the same sort of task that
suppressing a volcano would be--plugging one vent merely opens another.
Evil will last our time."
"I cannot take your optimistic view of the case," answered
MacShaughnassy. "It seems to me that crime--at all events, interesting
crime--is being slowly driven out of our existence. Pirates and
highwaymen have been practically abolished. Dear old 'Smuggler Bill' has
melted down his cutlass into a pint-can with a false bottom. The
pressgang that was always so ready to rescue our hero from his
approaching marriage has been disbanded. There's not a lugger fit for
the purposes of abduction left upon the coast.
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