Perhaps he takes your umbrella at random from the
barber's stand. He knows he can't get a worse one than his own. He may get
a better. He doesn't look at it very closely until he is well on his way.
Then, "Dear me! I've taken the wrong umbrella," he says, with an air of
surprise, for he likes really to feel that he has made a mistake. "Ah,
well, it's no use going back now. He'd be gone. _And I've left him mine_!"
It is thus that we play hide-and-seek with our own conscience. It is not
enough not to be found out by others; we refuse to be found out by
ourselves. Quite impeccable people, people who ordinarily seem unspotted
from the world, are afflicted with umbrella morals. It was a well-known
preacher who was found dead in a first-class railway carriage with a
third-class ticket in his pocket.
And as for books, who has any morals where they are concerned? I remember
some years ago the library of a famous divine and literary critic, who had
died, being sold. It was a splendid library of rare books, chiefly
concerned with seventeenth-century writers, about whom he was a
distinguished authority.
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