repugnant to their tastes and habits, thus leaving its decisions to the
portion of the community least qualified to make such as are either just or
enlightened.

I felt a disposition to laugh outright, at the manner in which Jason
betrayed a sneaking consciousness of crime, as he saw my meek, innocent,
simple-minded, just and warm-hearted mother lay the cards on the table that
evening. His sense of guilt was purely conventional, while my mother's
sense of innocence existed in the absence of false instruction, and in the
purity of her intentions. One had been taught no exaggerated and false
notion of sin,--nay, a notion that is impious, as it is clearly impious
in man to torture acts that are perfectly innocent, _per se_, into formal
transgressions of the law of God,--while the other had been educated under
the narrow and exaggerated notions of a provincial sect, and had obtained a
species of conscience that was purely dependent on his miserable schooling.
I heard my grandfather say that Jason actually showed the white of his eyes
the first time he saw Mr. Worden begin to deal, and he still looked, the
whole time we were at whist, as if he expected some one might enter, and
tell of his delinquency, I soon discovered that Jason had a much greater
dread of being told of, than of doing such things as taking a hand at
whist, or drinking a glass of punch, from which I inferred his true
conscience drew perceptible distinctions between the acts and the penalties
he had been accustomed to see inflicted on them. He was much disposed to a
certain sort of frailty; but it was a sneaking disposition to the last.

But, the amusing part of the exhibition, that first evening of our
acquaintance, was Mr. Worden's showing off his successor's familiarity
with the classics. Jason had not the smallest notion of quantity; and he
pronounced the Latin very much as one would read Mohawk, from a vocabulary
made out by a hunter, or a savant of the French Academy. As I had received