astes, dash out of the office, and
hit him flying with an offer of the very place he wants to go to. I
don't think there was a scalper on the continent made fewer blunders.
But I took it only as a stage. I was saving every dollar; I was looking
ahead. I knew what I wanted--wealth, education, a refined home, and a
conscientious cultured lady for a wife; for, Mr. Dodd"--this with a
formidable outcry--"every man is bound to marry above him: if the
woman's not the man's superior, I brand it as mere sensuality. There was
my idea, at least. That was what I was saving for; and enough, too! But
it isn't every man, I know that--it's far from every man--could do what
I did: close up the livest agency in St. Jo, where he was coining
dollars by the pot, set out alone, without a friend or a word of French,
and settle down here to spend his capital learning art."

"Was it an old taste?" I asked him, "or a sudden fancy?"

"Neither, Mr. Dodd," he admitted. "Of course, I had learned in my
tin-typing excursions to glory and exult in the works of God. But it
wasn't that. I just said to myself, 'What is most wanted in my age and
country? More culture and more art,' I said; and I chose the best place,
saved my money, and came here to get them."

The whole attitude of this young man warmed and shamed me. He had more
fire in his little toe than I had in my whole carcass; he was stuffed to
bursting with the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; and
even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not
quite clear, who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature
so full-blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual energy? So,
when he proposed that I should come and see his work (one of the regular
stages of a Latin Quarter friendship), I followed him with interest and
hope.

He lodged parsimoniously at the top of a tall house near the
Observatory, in a bare room, principally furnished with his own trunks
and papered with his own despicable studies. No man has less taste for
disagreeable duties than myself; perhaps there is only one subject on
which I cannot flatter a man without a blush; but upon that, upon all
that touches art, my sincerity is Roman. Once and twice I made the
circuit of his walls in silence, spying in every corner for some spark
of merit; he meanwhile following close at my heels, reading the verdict
in my face with furtive glances, presenting some fresh study for my
inspecti