o some worthy thing before I die. As a
schoolmaster I think to do it--a school-master to the poor and
ignorant, to teach them what nobody else will."

"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and
when there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence,
you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. Your fancies will be
your ruin, Clym."

Mrs. Yeobright spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words
was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. He
did not answer. There was in his face that hopelessness of being
understood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond
the reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost
too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.

No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His mother
then began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. "It
disturbs me, Clym, to find that you have come home with such thoughts
as those. I hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in
the world by your own free choice. Of course, I have always supposed
you were going to push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve
the name--when they have been put in a good way of doing well."

"I cannot help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. "Mother, I hate
the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man
deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees
half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and
teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every
morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain,
as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering
splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering
to the meanest vanities--I, who have health and strength enough for
anything. I have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and
the end is that I cannot do it any more."

"Why can't you do it as well as others?"

"I don't know, except that there are many things other people care
for which I don't; and that's partly why I think I ought to do this.
For one thing, my body does not require much of me. I cannot enjoy
delicacies; good things are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn
that defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what other
people require I can spend what such things cost upon anybody else."

Now, Yeobright, having inherited