d finished the text," said Snarley to me.

The truth is that he was afflicted with an immense and incurable
arrogance which caused him to resent the implication, by whomsoever
offered, that he was worse off than other people. It was Snarley's
distinction that he was able to maintain, and carry off, as much pride
on eighteen shillings a week as would require in most people at least
fifty thousand a year for effective sustenance. Of course, it was not
the eighteen shillings a week that made him proud; it was the
consciousness that he had inner resources which his would-be benefactors
knew not of. He regarded them all as his inferiors, and, had he known
how to do it, he would have treated them _de haut en bas_. Ill-bred
insolence was therefore his only weapon; but his use of this was as
effective as if it had been the well-bred variety in the hands of the
grandest of grand seigneurs. No wonder, then, that he failed to achieve
the position to which, in the view of Lady Lottie Passingham, his
talents entitled him.

But the inner resources of which I have spoken were Snarley's sufficient
compensation for his want of worldly success. The composition of this
hidden bread, it is true, was somewhat singular and not easy to imitate.
If the reader, when he has learned its ingredients, choose to call it
"religion," there is certainly nothing to prevent him. But that was not
the word that Snarley used, nor the one he would have approved of. In
his own limited nomenclature the elements of his spiritual kingdom were
two in number--"the stars" and "the spirits."

Snarley's knowledge of the heavens was extensive, if not profound. On
any fair view of profundity, I am inclined to think that it was
profound, though of the technique of astronomy he knew but little. He
had all the constellations at his fingers' ends, and had given to many
of them names of his own; he knew their seasons, their days, even their
hours; he knew the comings and goings of every visible planet; by day
and night the heavens were his clock. It was characteristic of him that
he seldom spoke of the weather when "passing the time of day"--a thing
which he never did except to his chosen friends. He spoke almost
invariably of the planets or the stars. "Good morning, the sun's very
low at this time o' year--did you see the lunar halo last night?--a fine
lot o' shootin' stars towards four o'clock, look for 'em again to-morrow
in the nor'-west--you can get your breakfast by