ther was in many respects an old-fashioned and somewhat
prejudiced man. It was just these very modern ideas that you find so
attractive, which were to him strange or even positively distasteful."
She made this remark more for the purpose of drawing out Worse than
because she wished to disparage her father.

"Consul Garman," said Worse, rising from his chair, "was a dissatisfied
man. His whole life was an ill-concealed struggle between the old and
the new. He placed extraordinary confidence in me, and I found in him
ideas, which no one would have expected to meet with in such a precise
and old-fashioned man of business. But to reconcile the two incongruous
currents was beyond his power; the immature and impetuous want of
exactitude of modern times was repugnant to his nature; and when his
great sense of justice forced him to recognize certain fundamental
truths, it was still always a source of annoyance to him to be obliged
to do so. It appears to me that he sought a counteracting influence to
all this, in his boundless admiration for old Consul Garman."

"But was not my grandfather a remarkable man? Don't you think so?" asked
Rachel, with interest.

"I will tell you my opinion, Miss Garman. He was a man who lived in a
time to which he was suited, and in which, on the whole, existence was
far more easy."

"You mean to say, then, that existence was easier in those times than in
the present?"

"Yes, I am sure of it," continued Worse, pacing hurriedly up and down
the room, as was his custom when he was excited. "Do you not see how
existence becomes more difficult with each year as it passes? New
discoveries and experiences are springing up every hour, and doubts and
inquiry are burrowing under, and undermining the whole fabric. Revered
and well-grounded truths are falling to the ground, and those who are
too timid to advance with the times, are gathering confusedly about the
rotten framework, supporting, preserving, and terrified, denouncing
youth, and predicting the destruction of society. Your grandfather stood
on the very summit of the cultivation of his day, living as he did in a
state of society which was peaceful and conscious of its security, with
aristocratic intelligence above and aristocratic ignorance below. Your
father, on the other hand, had grown to manhood when the movement
reached us, and he had already a fixed understanding as to his own line
in life, when the new ideas came streaming in upon him. Then