on in
another suburb of the New England metropolis. His digestion was weak and
he lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy--a regimen to which he was
so much attached that his tour seemed to him destined to be blighted
when, on landing on the Continent, he found that these delicacies did
not flourish under the table d'hote system. In Paris he had purchased
a bag of hominy at an establishment which called itself an American
Agency, and at which the New York illustrated papers were also to
be procured, and he had carried it about with him, and shown extreme
serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position of having his
hominy prepared for him and served at anomalous hours, at the hotels he
successively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of
business, at Mr. Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite
to unfold, his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast.
To carry out his joke, which certainly seems poor so long as it is
not explained, he used often to address his companion as "Dorchester."
Fellow-travelers very soon grow intimate but it is highly improbable
that at home these extremely dissimilar characters would have found any
very convenient points of contact. They were, indeed, as different as
possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters, accepted the
situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over
it privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in the
evening for the express purpose of considering it conscientiously
and impartially. He was not sure that it was a good thing for him to
associate with our hero, whose way of taking life was so little his own.
Newman was an excellent, generous fellow; Mr. Babcock sometimes said to
himself that he was a NOBLE fellow, and, certainly, it was impossible
not to like him. But would it not be desirable to try to exert an
influence upon him, to try to quicken his moral life and sharpen his
sense of duty? He liked everything, he accepted everything, he found
amusement in everything; he was not discriminating, he had not a high
tone. The young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which he
considered very grave, and which he did his best to avoid: what he would
have called a want of "moral reaction." Poor Mr. Babcock was extremely
fond of pictures and churches, and carried Mrs. Jameson's works about
in his trunk; he delighted in aesthetic analysis, and received peculiar
impressions f