But you used to like beetles and things. Truth for Truth's sake is a
fine motto, now?"

"Yes, if they lived by it. There was Bumpus, old Chlorum's favorite
student--in the laboratory, you remember. The old man died, and Bumpus
stole all his discoveries, and published them as his own; made quite a
pretty reputation, and is one of our leading chemists. You know how the
books on Astronomy are made? A man finds out a thing or two for himself,
cribs the rest from other books, changes the wording, and brings it all
out with a blare of trumpets as original research. Those methods are
approved, or at least tolerated, in the best scientific circles, and
other folks don't know the difference. O, I belong to a few societies
yet, and once in an age go to their meetings, when I get tired up here."

"So the outside world still has charms, eh? Have to go back to it now
and then, to keep alive, do you?"

"Yes, when I need to be reconciled to solitude; much as you go to hear
Ingersoll when your orthodoxy wants confirming, or Dr. Deadcreed if your
liberalism is to be stirred up. Let us spice the insipid dish with some
small variety. The lesser evil needs the greater for its foil."

"Look here, Harty; this sounds like pure perverseness; opposition for
its own sake, you know. I believe your money has been the ruin of you.
It's not an original remark, but if you'd had nothing you'd have done
something; gone into business like the rest of us, and made your way."

"Of course, if I had been obliged to; but I should have loved it none
the better. Poor Bayard Taylor said a man could serve God and mammon
both, but only by hating the mammon which he served from sheer
necessity. Say I got my living by a certain craft, would that make the
craft noble? 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians,' because we sell her
images! Why should I desire to supply the confiding public with shoes,
or sugar, or sealing-wax? Plenty of others can do that better, and find
it more amusing, than I should."

"If it's amusement you're after, most men find it in Society. You're not
too old for that yet."

"Blind guide, I have been there. So long ago, you say, that I've
forgotten what it's like? Not quite. Last winter I had to attend an
execution: couldn't get out of it, you know. My cousin married a
Washington belle, and I had to be there a week, and take it all in. Ah
well, this is a threadbare theme; but I could understand how men fifteen
hundred years ago fled from Ale