Hence our hat-shops, and
house-scaffoldings, and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, and
cellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies.
Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth fifty or a hundred
thousand dollars to swear, it can be overlooked in men who have merely
their day's wages. Because they are poor must they be denied this one
luxury?
This habit becomes more prevalent because of the infirmities of
temper. There are many men who, when at peace, are most fastidious
of speech, but when aroused into the violence of passion, blaze with
imprecation. The Oriental's wife spoken of would not have liked her
husband to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but now that the
camels are gone, and the sheep are gone, and the property is gone,
and the boils have come, she says: "Why don't you swear? Curse God
and die!" Others, all the year round, have not the froth of profanity
wiped from their lips, but try to expend all the fury of a twelvemonth
in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. A man apologized for his
occasional swearing by saying that, once in a year, in this way
he cleared himself out.
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