pretty or desirable thing; and so,
whenever the forces of invisible morality begin an encounter with the
troops of fashion and folly, the world and the flesh, as we have just
said, generally have the best of it.

It may be very shocking and dreadful to get money by cheating and
lying; but when the money thus got is put into the forms of yachts,
operas, pictures, statues, and splendid entertainments, of which you
are freely offered a share if you will only cultivate the acquaintance
of a sharper, will you not then begin to say, "Everybody is going,
why not I? As to countenancing Dives, why he is countenanced; and my
holding out does no good. What is the use of my sitting in my corner
and sulking? Nobody minds me." Thus Dives gains one after another to
follow his chariot, and make up his court.

Our friend John, simply by being a loving, indulgent husband, had
come into the position, in some measure, of demoralizing the public
conscience, of bringing in luxury and extravagance, and countenancing
people who really ought not to be countenanced. He had a sort of
uneasy perception of this fact; yet, at each particular step, he
seemed to himself to be doing no more than was right or reasonable. It
was a fact that, through all Springdale, people were beginning to be
uneasy and uncomfortable in houses that used to seem to them nice
enough, and ashamed of a style of dress and entertainment and living
that used to content them perfectly, simply because of the changes of
style and living in the John-Seymour mansion.

Of old, the Seymour family had always been a bulwark on the side of
a temperate self-restraint and reticence in worldly indulgence; of
a kind that parents find most useful to strengthen their hands when
children are urging them on to expenses beyond their means: for they
could say, "The Seymours are richer than we are, and you see they
don't change their carpets, nor get new sofas, nor give extravagant
parties; and they give simple, reasonable, quiet entertainments,
and do not go into any modern follies." So the Seymours kept up the
Fergusons, and the Fergusons the Seymours; and the Wilcoxes and the
Lennoxes encouraged each other in a style of quiet, reasonable living,
saving money for charity, and time for reading and self-cultivation,
and by moderation and simplicity keeping up the courage of less
wealthy neighbors to hold their own with them.

The John-Seymour party, therefore, was like the bursting of a great