If you
yourself haven't the human natur in you to know it, I'll tell
you, and we can all tell you that as a rule if the healthy
desires of natur ain't satisfied in a honest way, they will be in
another. You can't stop eating by passin' an act of Parleyment
to stop it. And as for yer eddication and cultivation, that
makes no difference. We know something here about yer eddicated
men;--more than they think. Who is it we meet about the streets
late at night, goin' to the gay houses? Some of 'em stand near
as high as you, but that don't alter their natur. They have
their passions like other men; and eddication don't keep 'em
down. Well, if that's the case, how can you ask people of our
sort to put on the curb, or make us do it? Are we to live more
like beasts than we are now, or do what's worse than murder? I
don't see no other way. Among us I tell you, sir, three-fourths
of our eddication, is eddication of the heart. We have to learn
to be human, kind, self-denyin', and I think this makes better
men, as a rule, than head-larnin'; tho' I don't despise that,
neither. But you don't suppose head-citizens would fight for
their country like men with wives and children behind 'em; why
they don't even at home work for daily food like a man with wife
and babies to provide for!
The stonemason was above his class--one of those shrewd men that
"the people called Methodists" get hold of, and use among the
lower orders, under the name of "local preachers;" men who learn
to think and speak better than their fellows.
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