ue justifying, in
this way, the ignorant prediction of an insolent woman.

"There are exceptions to all rules," I insisted. "And why are the
virtues of the parents not just as likely to descend to the children as
the vices? There was a fund of good, I can tell you, in that poor baby's
father--though I don't deny that he was a profligate man. And even the
horrible mother--as you heard just now--has virtue enough left in her
to feel grateful to the man who has taken care of her child. These are
facts; you can't dispute them."

The Doctor took out his pipe. "Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.
"Tobacco helps me to arrange my ideas."

I gave him the means of arranging his ideas; that is to say, I gave
him the match-box. He blew some preliminary clouds of smoke and then he
answered me:

"For twenty years past, my friend, I have been studying the question
of hereditary transmission of qualities; and I have found vices and
diseases descending more frequently to children than virtue and health.
I don't stop to ask why: there is no end to that sort of curiosity. What
I have observed is what I tell you; no more and no less. You will say
this is a horribly discouraging result of experience, for it tends to
show that children come into the world at a disadvantage on the day of
their birth. Of course they do. Children are born deformed; children are
born deaf, dumb, or blind; children are born with the seeds in them of
deadly diseases. Who can account for the cruelties of creation? Why are
we endowed with life--only to end in death? And does it ever strike you,
when you are cutting your mutton at dinner, and your cat is catching its
mouse, and your spider is suffocating its fly, that we are all, big
and little together, born to one certain inheritance--the privilege of
eating each other?"

"Very sad," I admitted. "But it will all be set right in another world."

"Are you quite sure of that?" the Doctor asked.

"Quite sure, thank God! And it would be better for you if you felt about
it as I do."

"We won't dispute, my dear Governor. I don't scoff at comforting hopes;
I don't deny the existence of occasional compensations. But I do see,
nevertheless, that Evil has got the upper hand among us, on this curious
little planet. Judging by my observation and experience, that ill-fated
baby's chance of inheriting the virtues of her parents is not to be
compared with her chances of inheriting their vices; especially if she
happens to