'I am not surprised to hear it, ma'am, when I think of some of our
miners.'

'Ah! But you must beware, Curdie, how you say of this man or that
man that he is travelling beastward. There are not nearly so many
going that way as at first sight you might think. When you met
your father on the hill tonight, you stood and spoke together on
the same spot; and although one of you was going up and the other
coming down, at a little distance no one could have told which was
bound in the one direction and which in the other. just so two
people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet
one may be getting better and the other worse, which is just the
greatest of all differences that could possibly exist between
them.'

'But ma'am,' said Curdie, 'where is the good of knowing that there
is such a difference, if you can never know where it is?'

'Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because
although the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do,
the wrong words will certainly do what I do not want them to do.
I did not say you can never know. When there is a necessity for
your knowing, when you have to do important business with this or
that man, there is always a way of knowing enough to keep you from
any great blunder. And as you will have important business to do
by and by, and that with people of whom you yet know nothing, it
will be necessary that you should have some better means than usual
of learning the nature of them.
'Now listen. Since it is always what they do, whether in their
minds or their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men,