Am I to understand that crime is nowadays looked upon as the recurrence of an ancestral trait ?" "I beg your pardon," said Dr.Leete with a smile half humorous, half deprecating, "but since you have so explicitly asked the question, I am forced to say that the fact is precisely that." After what I had already learned of the moral contrasts between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was doubtless absurd in me to begin to develop sensitiveness on the subject, and probably if Dr.
Leete had not spoken with that apologetic air and Mrs.Leete and Edith shown a corresponding embarrassment, I should not have flushed, as I was conscious I did.
"I was not in much danger of being vain of my generation before," I said; "but, really--" "This is your generation, Mr.West," interposed Edith.

"It is the one in which you are living, you know, and it is only because we are alive now that we call it ours." "Thank you.

I will try to think of it so," I said, and as my eyes met hers their expression quite cured my senseless sensitiveness.

"After all," I said, with a laugh, "I was brought up a Calvinist, and ought not to be startled to hear crime spoken of as an ancestral trait." "In point of fact," said Dr.Leete, "our use of the word is no reflection at all on your generation, if, begging Edith's pardon, we may call it yours, so far as seeming to imply that we think ourselves, apart from our circumstances, better than you were.

In your day fully nineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to include all sorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in the possessions of individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greater gains, or the desire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do.