He was tired, he said, of the crystal-hearted, noble-thinking young man of fiction.

Besides, it made bad reading for the "young person." It gave her false ideas, and made her dissatisfied with mankind as he really is.
And, thereupon, he launched forth and sketched us his idea of a hero, with reference to whom I can only say that I should not like to meet him on a dark night.
Brown, our one earnest member, begged us to be reasonable, and reminded us, not for the first time, and not, perhaps, altogether unnecessarily, that these meetings were for the purpose of discussing business, not of talking nonsense.
Thus adjured, we attacked the subject conscientiously.
Brown's idea was that the man should be an out-and-out blackguard, until about the middle of the book, when some event should transpire that would have the effect of completely reforming him.

This naturally brought the discussion down to the question with which I have commenced this chapter: Does man ever reform?
I argued in the negative, and gave the reasons for my disbelief much as I have set them forth here.

MacShaughnassy, on the other hand, contended that he did, and instanced the case of himself--a man who, in his early days, so he asserted, had been a scatterbrained, impracticable person, entirely without stability.
I maintained that this was merely an example of enormous will-power enabling a man to overcome and rise superior to the defects of character with which nature had handicapped him.
"My opinion of you," I said, "is that you are naturally a hopelessly irresponsible, well-meaning ass.

But," I continued quickly, seeing his hand reaching out towards a complete Shakespeare in one volume that lay upon the piano, "your mental capabilities are of such extraordinary power that you can disguise this fact, and make yourself appear a man of sense and wisdom." Brown agreed with me that in MacShaughnassy's case traces of the former disposition were clearly apparent, but pleaded that the illustration was an unfortunate one, and that it ought not to have weight in the discussion.
"Seriously speaking," said he, "don't you think that there are some experiences great enough to break up and re-form a man's nature ?" "To break up," I replied, "yes; but to re-form, no.