they asked) the poor gratification of my company and
countenance.

Wonderful are the consolations of literature! As soon as that letter was
written and posted the consciousness of virtue glowed in my veins like
some rare vintage.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH I GO WEST

I reached my uncle's door next morning in time to sit down with the
family to breakfast. More than three years had intervened--almost
without mutation in that stationary household--since I had sat there
first, a young American freshman, bewildered among unfamiliar dainties
(Finnan haddock, kippered salmon, baps, and mutton-ham), and had wearied
my mind in vain to guess what should be under the tea-cosy. If there
were any change at all, it seemed that I had risen in the family esteem.
My father's death once fittingly referred to with a ceremonial
lengthening of Scots upper lips and wagging of the female head, the
party launched at once (God help me!) into the more cheerful topic of my
own successes. They had been so pleased to hear such good accounts of
me; I was quite a great man now; where was that beautiful statue of the
Genius of Something or other? "You haven't it here? Not here? Really?"
asks the sprightliest of my cousins, shaking curls at me; as though it
were likely I had brought it in the cab, or kept it concealed about my
person like a birthday surprise. In the bosom of this family,
unaccustomed to the tropical nonsense of the West, it became plain the
_Sunday Herald_ and poor blethering Pinkerton had been accepted for
their face. It is not possible to invent a circumstance that could have
more depressed me; and I am conscious that I behaved all through that
breakfast like a whipped schoolboy.

At length, the meal and family prayers being both happily over, I
requested the favour of an interview with Uncle Adam on "the state of my
affairs." At sound of this ominous expression the good man's face
conspicuously lengthened; and when my grandfather, having had the
proposition repeated to him (for he was hard of hearing), announced his
intention of being present at the interview, I could not but think that
Uncle Adam's sorrow kindled into momentary irritation. Nothing, however,
but the usual grim cordiality appeared upon the surface; and we all
three passed ceremoniously to the adjoining library, a gloomy theatre
for a depressing piece of business. My grandfather charged a clay pipe,
and sat tremulously smoking in a corner of the fireless chim