and allowing them to read him to sleep after tea on the
Tuesday? He had not done these things, was not doing them now,
because he had ventured to think himself capable of something that
would justify him in leaving the common circle. He had left it, but
was not justified. He had been in Parliament, had been in office,
and had tried to write a book. But he was not a legislator, was
not a statesman, and was not an author. He was simply a weak, vain,
wretched man, who, through false conceit, had been induced to neglect
almost every duty of life! To-whew, to-whew, to-whew, to-whew! As the
sounds filled his ears, such were the thoughts which lay heavy on his
bosom. So idle as he had been in thinking, so inconclusive, so frail,
so subject to gusts of wind, so incapable of following his subject to
the end, why had he dared to leave that Sunday-keeping, church-going,
domestic, decent life, which would have become one of so ordinary a
calibre as himself? There are men who may doubt, who may weigh the
evidence, who may venture to believe or disbelieve in compliance with
their own reasoning faculties,--who may trust themselves to think
it out; but he, too clearly, had not been, was not, and never
would be one of these. To walk as he saw other men walking around
him,--because he was one of the many; to believe that to be good
which the teachers appointed for him declared to be good; to do
prescribed duties without much personal inquiry into the causes which
had made them duties; to listen patiently, and to be content without
excitement; that was the mode of living for which he should have
known himself to be fit. But he had not known it, and had strayed
away, and had ventured to think that he could think,--and had been
ambitious. And now he found himself stranded in the mud of personal
condemnation,--and that so late in life, that there remained to him
no hope of escape. Whew-to-to; whew-to-to; whew,--to-whew. "Stemm,
why do you let that brute go on with his cursed flute?" Stemm at that
moment had opened the door to suggest that as he usually dined at
one, and as it was now past three, he would go out and get a bit of
something to eat.

"He's always at it, sir," said Stemm, pausing for a moment before he
alluded to his own wants.

"Why the deuce is he always at it? Why isn't he indited for a
nuisance? Who's to do anything with such a noise as that going on for
hours together? He has nearly driven me mad."

"It's young Wobble as