way of life in which he could most readily
assist his family. But he did so with a mind divided; fled the
neighbourhood of former comrades; and chose, out of several positions
placed at his disposal, a clerkship in New York.

His career thenceforth was one of unbroken shame. He did not drink, he
was exactly honest, he was never rude to his employers, yet was
everywhere discharged. Bringing no interest to his duties, he brought no
attention; his day was a tissue of things neglected and things done
amiss; and from place to place, and from town to town, he carried the
character of one thoroughly incompetent. No man can bear the word
applied to him without some flush of colour, as indeed there is none
other that so emphatically slams in a man's face the door of
self-respect. And to Herrick, who was conscious of talents and
acquirements, who looked down upon those humble duties in which he was
found wanting, the pain was the more exquisite. Early in his fall he had
ceased to be able to make remittances; shortly after, having nothing but
failure to communicate, he ceased writing home; and about a year before
this tale begins, turned suddenly upon the streets of San Francisco by a
vulgar and infuriated German Jew, he had broken the last bonds of
self-respect, and, upon a sudden impulse, changed his name and invested
his last dollar in a passage on the mail brigantine, the _City of
Papeete_. With what expectation he had trimmed his flight for the South
Seas, Herrick perhaps scarcely knew. Doubtless there were fortunes to be
made in pearl and copra; doubtless others not more gifted than himself
had climbed in the island world to be queen's consorts and king's
ministers. But if Herrick had gone there with any manful purpose, he
would have kept his father's name; the _alias_ betrayed his moral
bankruptcy; he had struck his flag; he entertained no hope to reinstate
himself or help his straitened family; and he came to the islands (where
he knew the climate to be soft, bread cheap, and manners easy) a skulker
from life's battle and his own immediate duty. Failure, he had said, was
his portion; let it be a pleasant failure.

It is fortunately not enough to say, "I will be base." Herrick continued
in the islands his career of failure; but in the new scene and under the
new name, he suffered no less sharply than before. A place was got, it
was lost in the old style; from the long-suffering of the keepers of
restaurants he fell to more