at it seems to me silly. The fact is," he might add, with a smile,
"I don't seem to have the least use for a frame of mind without square
meals; and you can't get it out of my head that it's a man's duty to die
rich, if he can."

"What for?" I asked him once.

"O, I don't know," he replied. "Why in snakes should anybody want to be
a sculptor, if you come to that? I would love to sculp myself. But what
I can't see is why you should want to do nothing else. It seems to argue
a poverty of nature."

Whether or not he ever came to understand me--and I have been so tossed
about since then that I am not very sure I understand myself--he soon
perceived that I was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days of
argument, suddenly dropped the subject, and announced that he was
wasting capital, and must go home at once. No doubt he should have gone
long before, and had already lingered over his intended time for the
sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but man is so unjustly
minded that the very fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered
my vexation. I resented his departure in the light of a desertion; I
would not say, but doubtless I betrayed it; and something hang-dog in
the man's face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful.
It is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we
drew sensibly apart--a circumstance that I recall with shame. On the
last day he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he knew I had
formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late from considerations
of economy. He seemed ill at ease; I was myself both sorry and sulky;
and the meal passed with little conversation.

"Now, Loudon," said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was come
and our pipes lighted, "you can never understand the gratitude and
loyalty I bear you. You don't know what a boon it is to be taken up by a
man that stands on the pinnacle of civilisation; you can't think how
it's refined and purified me, how it's appealed to my spiritual nature;
and I want to tell you that I would die at your door like a dog."

I don't know what answer I tried to make, but he cut me short.

"Let me say it out!" he cried. "I revere you for your whole-souled
devotion to art; I can't rise to it, but there's a strain of poetry in
my nature, Loudon, that responds to it. I want you to carry it out, and
I mean to help you."

"Pinkerton, what nonsense is this?" I interrupted.

"Now don't get mad, L