True, in the mess and in his presence among the men there was less profanity than there had been at the first, but it filled him with a kind of rage to feel that this change was due to no sense of the evil of the habit, but solely to an unwillingness to give offence to one whom many of them were coming to regard with respect and some even with affection.
"I hate that," he said to the M.O., to whom he would occasionally unburden his soul.

"You'd think I was a kind of policeman over their morals." "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," said the M.O., to whom the habit of profanity was a very venial sin.

"You ought to be mighty glad that your presence does act as a kind of moral prophylactic.

And it does, I assure you.

I confess that since I have come to be associated with you, I am conscious of a very real, and at times, distressing limitation of my vocabulary.