neglected by his conscience during the busier times, as, for example,

that he had committed arson and deserted a wife. For the first time he

looked these long neglected facts in the face.

It is disagreeable to think one has committed Arson, because it is an

action that leads to jail. Otherwise I do not think there was a grain

of regret for that in Mr. Polly's composition. But deserting Miriam

was in a different category. Deserting Miriam was mean.

This is a history and not a glorification of Mr. Polly, and I tell of

things as they were with him. Apart from the disagreeable twinge

arising from the thought of what might happen if he was found out, he

had not the slightest remorse about that fire. Arson, after all, is an

artificial crime. Some crimes are crimes in themselves, would be

crimes without any law, the cruelties, mockery, the breaches of faith

that astonish and wound, but the burning of things is in itself

neither good nor bad. A large number of houses deserve to be burnt,

most modern furniture, an overwhelming majority of pictures and

books--one might go on for some time with the list. If our community

was collectively anything more than a feeble idiot, it would burn most

of London and Chicago, for example, and build sane and beautiful

cities in the place of these pestilential heaps of rotten private

property. I have failed in presenting Mr. Polly altogether if I have

not made you see that he was in many respects an artless child of

Nature, far more untrained, undisciplined and spontaneous than an

ordinary savage. And he was really glad, for all that little drawback

322

The History of Mr Polly