A golden mean is certainly what every man should aim at.  But it is easier talking than doing; and, my infirmity being notoriously too much milkiness of heart, I find it difficult to maintain that steady equatorial line between the two poles of too much murder on the one hand, and too little on the other.  I am too soft—­Doctor, too soft; and people get excused through me—­nay, go through life without an attempt made upon them, that ought not to be excused.  I believe if I had the management of things, there would hardly be a murder from year’s end to year’s end.  In fact I’m for virtue, and goodness, and all that sort of thing.  And two instances I’ll give you to what an extremity I carry my virtue.  The first may seem a trifle; but not if you knew my nephew, who was certainly born to be hanged, and would have been so long ago, but for my restraining voice.  He is horribly ambitious, and thinks himself a man of cultivated taste in most branches of murder, whereas, in fact, he has not one idea on the subject, but such as he has stolen from me.  This is so well known, that the club has twice blackballed him, though every indulgence was shown to him as my relative.  People came to me and said—­“Now really, President, we would do much to serve a relative of yours.  But still, what can be said?  You know yourself that he’ll disgrace us.  If we were to elect him, why, the next thing we should hear of would be some vile butcherly murder, by way of justifying our choice.  And what sort of a concern would it be?  You know, as well as we do, that it would be a disgraceful affair, more worthy of the shambles than of an artist’s attelier.  He would fall upon some great big man, some huge farmer returning drunk from a fair.  There would be plenty of blood, and that he would expect us to take in lieu of taste, finish, scenical grouping.  Then, again, how would he tool?  Why, most probably with a cleaver and a couple of paving stones:  so that the whole coup d’oeil would remind you rather of some hideous ogre or cyclops, than of the delicate operator of the nineteenth century.”  The picture was drawn with the hand of truth; that I could not but allow, and, as to personal feelings in the matter, I dismissed them from the first.  The next morning I spoke to my nephew—­I was delicately situated, as you see, but I determined that no consideration should induce me to flinch from my duty.  “John,” said I, “you seem to me to have taken an erroneous view of life and its duties.  Pushed on by ambition, you are dreaming rather of what it might be glorious to attempt, than what it would be possible for you to accomplish.  Believe me, it is not necessary to a man’s respectability that he should commit a murder.  Many a man has passed through life most respectably, without attempting any species of homicide—­good, bad, or indifferent.  It is your first duty to ask yourself, quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent? we cannot all be brilliant