liberties with, as I've learned by repeated lessons."

"I know it, Bob: one lesson is enough for me. I suppose it would hardly
do for me to go back with you?"

"Hardly. Personally I should be delighted, and so would some others;
but--you know as well as I do. I have got to feel somebody's pulse, and
proceed very gingerly. Possess your soul in what patience you can till
you hear from me. See here, Hartman; with your views, and your
well-grounded aversion to domestic and even social life, a little of
this sort of thing ought to go a long way. I should think you'd be
unwilling to risk contact with the world again. A child that will play
about the cars, you know, after it's once been run over--"

"O, but you have opened my eyes to a sacred duty. Honor is above
self-preservation. I want to purge my conscience, you see."

"Then do that and pause there. It was your vaulting ambition which
overleaped all bounds before. If you get into another row, you may have
to stay in it. I have full power of attorney, you say; well, I may have
to make all sorts of promises for you before I can get you leave to
return to duty, and you'll be expected to keep them. You don't know how
difficult that will be for your unbridled inexperience; you'll be
cabined, cribbed, confined within the dull limits of Propriety. It would
be much better for you to be content with a correspondence, if you can
get as far as that. You could expound your penitence and changed views
by mail, and have time to think what you were saying, and get it in
shape; whereas, if you plunge into the cold and heartless world again,
you'll probably get into more trouble, and I can't come up here to set
you straight again--not before next May. You were right, James: there is
nothing in common between you and the world. Why expose yourself to its
temptations, its dangers, its hollow and soul-wearying forms? This
atmosphere is so much purer; there is less of Vanity and Woe up here.
Stay where you are well off. Clarice can write a pretty good letter when
she chooses; I'll try to fix it that way for you." But he would not
accept this reasonable view, and insisted on my getting permission for
him to come down before Christmas, and as much sooner as possible.

So nobody but he could drive me to the cars; he filled the fifteen miles
with charges and reminders. As the train moved off, he was waving his
hat, his face radiant with hope and pathetic with confidence. He looks
ten years you