virtue,--hopeful, affectionate, confiding, giving
his young heart to that fair-haired girl as freely as he would have
bestowed a moss-rose; and she, making light of the gift, and with a
woman's coquetry, torturing him by a jealous levity till he resented the
wrong, and tore himself away. And then, Catinka,--how I tried the gold
of my nature in that crucible, and would not fall in love with her
before I had made her worthy of my love; and when I had failed in that,
how I had turned from love to friendship, and offered myself the victim
for a man I never cared about. No matter; the world will know me
at last. Men will recognize the grand stuff that I am made of. If
commentators spend years in exploring the recondite passages of great
writers, and making out beauties where there were only obscurities, why
should not all the dark parts of my nature come out as favorably,
and some flattering interpreter say, "Potts was for a long
time misconceived; few men were more wrongfully judged by their
contemporaries. It was to a mere accident, after all, we owe it that we
are now enabled to render him the justice so long denied him. His was
one of those remarkable natures in which it is difficult to say whether
humility or self-confidence predominated"?

Then I thought of the national excitement to discover the missing Potts;
just as if I had been a lost Arctic voyager. Expeditions sent out to
track me; all the thousand speculations as to whether I had gone this
way or that; where and from whom the latest tidings of me could be
traced; the heroic offers of new discoverers to seek me living, or,
sad alternative, restore to the country that mourned me the _reliquiae
Pottsi_, I always grew tender in my moods of self-compassion, and I felt
my eyes swimming now in pity for my fate; and let me add in this place
my protest against the vulgar error which stigmatizes as selfishness
the mere fact of a man's susceptibility. How, I would simply ask, can
he feel for others who has no sense of sympathy with his own suffering
nature? If the well of human kindness be dried up within him, how can he
give to the parched throats the refreshing waters of compassion?

Deal with the fact how you may, I was very sorry for myself, and
seriously doubted if as sincere a mourner would bewail me when I was
gone.

If a little time had been given me, I would have endeavored to get up
my snug little chamber somewhat more like a prison cell; I would have
substi