io of my
friend. Dijon and I have sat by the hour, and gazed upon that company of
images. The severe, the frisky, the classical, the Louis Quinze, were
there--from Joan of Arc in her soldierly cuirass, to Leda with the
swan; nay!--and God forgive me for a man that knew better!--the humorous
was represented also. We sat and gazed, I say; we criticised, we turned
them hither and thither; even upon the closest inspection they looked
quite like statuettes; and yet nobody would have a gift of them!

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man: but about
the sixth month, when I already owed near two hundred dollars to
Pinkerton, and half as much again in debts scattered about Paris, I
awoke one morning with a horrid sentiment of oppression, and found I was
alone: my vanity had breathed her last during the night. I dared not
plunge deeper in the bog; I saw no hope in my poor statuary; I owned
myself beaten at last; and sitting down in my night-shirt beside the
window, whence I had a glimpse of the tree-tops at the corner of the
boulevard, and where the music of its early traffic fell agreeably upon
my ear, I penned my farewell to Paris, to art, to my whole past life,
and my whole former self. "I give in," I wrote. "When the next allowance
arrives, I shall go straight out West, where you can do what you like
with me."

It is to be understood that Pinkerton had been, in a sense, pressing me
to come from the beginning; depicting his isolation among new
acquaintances, "who have none of them your culture," he wrote;
expressing his friendship in terms so warm that it sometimes embarrassed
me to think how poorly I could echo them; dwelling upon his need for
assistance; and the next moment turning about to commend my resolution
and press me to remain in Paris. "Only remember, Loudon," he would
write, "if you ever _do_ tire of it, there's plenty of work here for
you--honest, hard, well-paid work, developing the resources of this
practically virgin State. And, of course, I needn't say what a pleasure
it would be to me if we were going at it _shoulder to shoulder_." I
marvel, looking back, that I could so long have resisted these appeals,
and continue to sink my friend's money in a manner that I knew him to
dislike. At least, when I did awake to any sense of my position, I awoke
to it entirely, and determined not only to follow his counsel for the
future, but, even as regards the past, to rectify his losses. For in
th