to construe as devotion the
enthusiasm of the clever men who had honored me with an explanation of
their original and interesting conceptions. It was clear that I was
still not wholly free from flippancy and nonsense.

I did not attempt to decide between the merits of the diametrically
opposed schools of thought represented by Mr. Spence and Mr. Barr. I was
sensible enough to understand that long study and reflection would be
requisite to qualify me to take sides intelligently. But yet I had
already a distinct preference. I felt that whatever the value of his
system, Mr. Spence was thoroughly and grandly in earnest. His whole soul
was in the spread and development of his peculiar doctrines. To obtain
their recognition he was willing to sacrifice luxury, comfort, and all
the pleasures of life. Everything else was a secondary consideration.
Already in the course of his thorough investigations he had endured
horrors and committed extravagances from which a nature so palpably
refined as his must have shrunk with loathing. It was novel and
delightful to me to meet a man so completely absorbed in a pursuit which
promised no reward beyond the amelioration of society,--a result of
which he could hope to live to see only the beginnings. For mere dollars
and cents he cared nothing. He had no ambition to grow rich; indeed, it
was one of his tenets that no one should retain more than a certain
amount of property,--doubtless enough to keep the wolf from the door,
and to permit the continuation of scholarship. How much more unselfish
and ennobling a life than that of the feverish money-getter, with all
his appliances of forge and factory, and export and import! I had found
an answer to my yearnings and my unrest in this untiring devotion to
abstract truth.

A part of this was true undoubtedly of Paul Barr as well. Ardor and zeal
were the very essence of his philosophy; but it was easy to divine by
looking at him--at least it appeared so to me--that he lacked the spirit
of persistent, unselfish scholarship which distinguished his rival. I
felt that he was superficial, and that he would rather sacrifice his
principles than his own interests.

All the more did I have faith in this instinctive preference for Mr.
Spence, from the fact that from the standpoint of the picturesque and
romantic everything was on the side of the artist-poet. Tall, dashing,
handsome, and brilliant, he was adapted and doubtless accustomed to
carry hearts by