is not like me i have never been a and i don t think i would be if i could of a young man conscience the whole of your moral nature is reflected in even to the and i don t think i would be if i i love the and there is certainly some thing strangely grotesque in the life of a but it is nonsense to suggest that is myself � � � you know that my original notion was to do the side of de that conscience that had the genius to leave out really if you can only make disagreeable remarks i think we had better bring this conversation to a close conscience one word more you have failed in everything you have attempted and you will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles � those rules of conduct which the race has built up guided by an of a g man instinct of self preservation humanity herself against those who attempt co her and none neither napoleon nor the wretched such as you are has escaped her vengeance you would have me pull down the black flag and turn myself into an honest with children in the hold and a wife at the you would remind me that grey hairs begin to show that health falls into rags that high spirits split like canvas and that in the end the bright an old tossed by the waves of ill fortune and by the winds into those dismal and dangerous � nurses and uncomfortable chambers such will be my fate and since none may his fate none can do better than to run the course which he must pursue conscience you might devise a moral ending one that would all classes it is easy to see that you are a nineteenth century conscience of a young man conscience i do not hope to find a saint in you an idea one of these days i will write my i again i tell you that nothing really matters to me but art and knowing this you chatter of the of my not concluding my novel with some foolish moral � � � nothing matters to me but art conscience would you the wretched servant girl if by so doing you could pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper xvi and now reader i will answer the questions which have been you this long while which you have asked at every stage of this long narrative of a sinful life shake not your head lift not your finger exquisitely reader you can deceive me in nothing i know the base and unworthy the use of the word sinful here seems liable to the phrase should run of a virtuous life for remember that my virtues are your vices of a young man soul this is a a such a one as will never happen in your life again therefore i say let us put off all customary disguise let us be frank you have been angrily asking exquisitely reader why you have been forced to read this record of a sinful life in your exquisite you have said over and over again what good purpose can it serve for a man to tell us of his unless indeed it is to show us how he may rise as if on stepping stones of his dead self to higher things etc you sighed o friend and you threw the magazine on the table where such things lie and you murmured something about leaving the world a little better than you found it and you went down to dinner and lost consciousness of the world in the animal enjoyment of your stomach i hold out my hand to you i embrace you you arc my brother and i say yourself you will leave the world no better than you found it the pig that is being as i write this line will leave the world better than it found it but you will leave only a fit for nothing but worms look back upon your life examine it it weigh it on it and then say if you dare that it has not been a very futile and foolish affair soldier robber priest virgin i care not this should run forgot your of a young man what you are if you have not brought children into the world to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has been i hold out my hand to you we are brothers but in my heart of hearts i think myself a cut above you because i do not believe in leaving the world better than i found it and you exquisitely reader think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the world better than you found it the one eternal and delight of life is to think for one reason or another that we are better than our neighbours this is why i wrote this book and this is why it is affording you so much pleasure o exquisitely h reader my friend my brother because it helps you to the belief that you are not so bad after all now to resume the of my year has sounded in three or f ur years my youth will be as a faint haze on the sea an recollection so now while standing on the last verge of the hill i will look back on the valley i lingered in do i regret i neither repent nor do i regret and a fool and a i should be if i did i know the worth and the of more than ten years of enjoyment nature provided me with as perfect a apparatus mental and physical as she ever turned out of her my stomach and brain of a young man are set in the most 