temptation. And certainly, in no man could a
want of integrity have been less excusable. Newman knew the crooked from
the straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last,
a great many moments of lively disgust. But none the less some of his
memories seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien,
and it struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had
never, on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful. He had
spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands,
and, now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-getting
appeared tolerably dry and sterile. It is very well to sneer at
money-getting after you have filled your pockets, and Newman, it may be
said, should have begun somewhat earlier to moralize thus delicately. To
this it may be answered that he might have made another fortune, if he
chose; and we ought to add that he was not exactly moralizing. It had
come back to him simply that what he had been looking at all summer was
a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not all been made by
sharp railroad men and stock-brokers.

During his stay at Baden-Baden he received a letter from Mrs. Tristram,
scolding him for the scanty tidings he had sent to his friends of the
Avenue d'Iena, and begging to be definitely informed that he had not
concocted any horrid scheme for wintering in outlying regions, but was
coming back sanely and promptly to the most comfortable city in the
world. Newman's answer ran as follows:--

"I supposed you knew I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect
anything of me. I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure
friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence
altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have
got hold of a curiosity, and I hope you will value it. You want to know
everything that has happened to me these three months. The best way to
tell you, I think, would be to send you my half dozen guide-books, with
my pencil-marks in the margin. Wherever you find a scratch or a cross,
or a 'Beautiful!' or a 'So true!' or a 'Too thin!' you may know that
I have had a sensation of some sort or other. That has been about my
history, ever since I left you. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany,
Italy, I have been through the whole list, and I don't think I am any
the worse for it. I know more about Madonnas and church-steeples than I
s