this money. All the slow years of work trailed up before him,
that were gone,--of hard, wearing work for daily bread, when his
brain had been starving for knowledge, and his soul dulled,
debased with sordid trading. Was this to be always? Were these
few golden moments of life to be traded for the bread and meat he
ate? To eat and drink,--was that what he was here for?

As he paced the floor mechanically, some vague recollection
crossed his brain of a childish story of the man standing where
the two great roads of life parted. They were open before him
now. Money, money,--he took the word into his heart as a miser
might do. With it, he was free from these carking cares that
were making his mind foul and muddy. If he had money! Slow,
cool visions of triumphs rose before him outlined on the years to
come, practical, if Utopian. Slow and sure successes of science
and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Far
off, yet surely to come,--surely for him,--a day when a pure
social system should be universal, should have thrust out its
fibres of light, knitting into one the nations of the earth, when
the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work,
and stand up, knowing itself divine. "To insure to every man the
freest development of his faculties:" he said over the hackneyed
dogma again and again, while the heavy, hateful years of poverty
rose before him that had trampled him down. "To insure to him
the freest development," he did not need to wait for St. Simon,
or the golden year, he thought with a dreary gibe; money was
enough, and--Miss Herne.

It was curious, that, when this woman, whom he saw every day,
came up in his mind, it was always in one posture, one costume.