e. And if the man has had wisdom and strength to abstain
from vulgar self-pollution, Satan must intrust his spear to no
half-fledged devil, but grasp it in his own hand, and join battle in
his own person.

Undismayed by this fact, Helwyse reached Washington Street, and
followed its westerly meanderings, meaning to spend part of the
interval before dinner in exploring Boston. He walked with an easy
sideways-swaying of the shoulders, whisking his cane, and smiling to
himself as he recalled the points of his interview with the President.

"Just the thing, to make MacGentle tutelary divinity of so elusive a
matter as money! Wonder whether the Directors ever thought of that?
For all his unreality, though, he has something more real in him than
the heaviest Director on the Board!

"How composedly he took me for my father! and when he discovered his
mistake, how composedly he welcomed me in my own person! Was that the
extreme of senility? or was it a subtile assertion of the fact, that
he who keeps in the vanguard of the age in a certain sense contains
his father--the past--within himself, and is a distinct person chiefly
by virtue of that containing power?

"Why didn't I ask him more about my foster-cousin Manetho? Egyptians
are more astute than affectionate. Would he cleave to my poor uncle
for these last eighteen years merely for love? Why did he transfer
that money so soon after we sailed? Ten to one, he has in his own
hands the future as well as the present disposal of Doctor Hiero
Glyphic's fortune! The old gentleman has had time to make a hundred
wills since the one he showed my father, twenty years ago!

"Well, and what is that to you? Ah, Balder Helwyse, you lazy impostor,
you are pining for Egyptian flesh-pots! Don't tell me about civility
to relatives, and the study of human nature! You are as bad as you
accuse your poor cousin of being,--who may be dead, or pastor of a
small parish, for all you know. And yet every school-girl can prattle
of the educational uses of poverty, and of having to make one's own
living! I have a good mind to take your thousand pounds sterling out
of your pocket and throw them into Charles River,--and then begin at
the beginning! By the time I'd learnt what poverty can teach, it would
be over,--or I am no true man! Only they who are ashamed of
themselves, or afraid of other people, need to start rich."

Nevertheless, he could not do otherwise than hunt up the only relative
he had in