logically to make him despise me. He has studied,
thought, suffered, loved--loved those very plain sisters and nieces.
Poor me! how should I be virtuous? I have no sisters, plain or
pretty!--nothing to love, work for, live for. My dear Theodore, if you
are going one of these days to despise me and drop me--in the name of
comfort, come to the point at once, and make an end of our state of
tension.

He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the
_bonhomme_ quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of
contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him--yet respects and
admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England
conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest,
forsooth, they should look over his neighbor's wall. He'll not
understand that he may as well sacrifice the old reprobate for a lamb as
for a sheep. His view of the gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue
of cobwebs--a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wire-drawn charities, and
hair-breadth 'scapes from utter damnation, and sudden platitudes of
generosity--fit, all of it, to make an angel curse!

"The man's a perfect egotist and fool," say I, "but I like him." Now
Theodore likes him--or rather wants to like him; but he can't reconcile
it to his self-respect--fastidious deity!--to like a fool. Why the deuce
can't he leave it alone altogether? It's a purely practical matter.
He ought to do the duties of his place all the better for having his
head clear of officious sentiment. I don't believe in disinterested
service; and Theodore is too desperately bent on preserving his
disinterestedness. With me it's different. I am perfectly free to love
the _bonhomme_--for a fool. I'm neither a scribe nor a Pharisee; I am
simply a student of the art of life.

And then, Theodore is troubled about his sisters. He's afraid he's not
doing his duty by them. He thinks he ought to be with them--to be
getting a larger salary--to be teaching his nieces. I am not versed in
such questions. Perhaps he ought.

May 3d.--This morning Theodore sent me word that he was ill and unable
to get up; upon which I immediately went in to see him. He had caught
cold, was sick and a little feverish. I urged him to make no attempt to
leave his room, and assured him that I would do what I could to
reconcile Mr. Sloane to his absence. This I found an easy matter. I read
to him for a couple of hours, wrote four letters--one in French--a