expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable
incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery,
as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything
is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of
existence in his own peculiar way. Amongst the evils of a penal colony
is the society of those who form it; and if the reader is worthy of
better company, he will need no words from me to remind him of what he
has to put up with at present. If he has a soul above the common, or
if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble
prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common
criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself.

In general, however, it should be said that this view of life will
enable us to contemplate the so-called imperfections of the great
majority of men, their moral and intellectual deficiencies and the
resulting base type of countenance, without any surprise, to say
nothing of indignation; for we shall never cease to reflect where we
are, and that the men about us are beings conceived and born in
sin, and living to atone for it. That is what Christianity means in
speaking of the sinful nature of man.

_Pardon's the word to all_! [1] Whatever folly men commit, be
their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise
forbearance; remembering that when these faults appear in others, it
is our follies and vices that we behold. They are the shortcomings of
humanity, to which we belong; whose faults, one and all, we share;
yes, even those very faults at which we now wax so indignant, merely
because they have not yet appeared in ourselves. They are faults that
do not lie on the surface. But they exist down there in the depths of
our nature; and should anything call them forth, they will come and