d is now
beginning to flourish so hopefully around us? How beautiful it is,
and, so far as we can yet see, how practicable! The ages have waited
for us, and here we are, the very first that have essayed to carry on
our mortal existence in love and mutual help! Hollingsworth, I would
be loath to take the ruin of this enterprise upon my conscience."

"Then let it rest wholly upon mine!" he answered, knitting his black
brows. "I see through the system. It is full of
defects,--irremediable and damning ones!--from first to last, there is
nothing else! I grasp it in my hand, and find no substance whatever.
There is not human nature in it."

"Why are you so secret in your operations?" I asked. "God forbid that
I should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a
philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His
sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some
point of his course--I know not exactly when or where--he is tempted to
palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that
the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside
his private conscience. Oh, my dear friend, beware this error! If you
meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our
companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but
allow them an opportunity of defending themselves."

"It does not suit me," said Hollingsworth. "Nor is it my duty to do
so."

"I think it is," replied I.

Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but, like fate, inexorably.

"I will not argue the point," said he. "What I desire to know of you
is,--and you can tell me in one word,--whether I am to look for your
cooperation in this great scheme of good? Take it up with me! Be my
brother in it! It offers you (what you have told me, over and over
again, that you most need) a purpose in life, worthy of the extremest
self-devotion,--worthy of martyrdom, should God so order it! In this
view, I present it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind. Your
peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so
wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike
hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the
languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man.
There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead,
there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will,-