Whether it really
occurred, or Tilton invented it, it makes him a problem in social
philosophy of considerable interest.
Moulton's story, too, furnishes several puzzles of the same kind.
That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy
circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious
circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine
and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his
adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family
circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known
and acknowledged tendency of our society. But perhaps the most
striking thing in Moulton's _role_ is that while he appears on the
scene as a gentleman or "man of the world," who does for honor's
sake what the other actors do from fear of God, his whole course is
a kind of caricature of what a gentleman under like circumstances
would really do. For instance, he accepts Beecher's confidence,
which may have been unavoidable, and betrays it by telling various
people, from time to time, of the several incidents of Beecher's
trouble, which is something of which a weak or loose-tongued
person--vain of the task in which he was engaged, as it seemed to
him, _i.
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