He believed, and acted upon the belief, that the inferior ought to
render perpetual incense to the superior, and that the superior
should receive it as a matter of course. When his father was ill he
never waited on him or sat up a single night with him. If duty was
disagreeable to him Clem paid homage to it afar off, but pleaded
exemption. He admitted that waiting on the sick is obligatory on
people who are fitted for it, and is very charming. Nothing was more
beautiful to him than tender, filial care spending itself for a
beloved object. But it was not his vocation. His nerves were more
finely ordered than those of mankind generally, and the sight of
disease and suffering distressed him too much. Everything was
surrendered to him in the houses of his friends. If any
inconvenience was to be endured, he was the first person to be
protected from it, and he accepted the greatest sacrifices, with a
graceful acknowledgment, it is true, but with no repulse. To what
better purpose could the best wine be put than in cherishing his
imagination. It was simple waste to allow it to be poured out upon
the earth, and to give it to a fool was no better. After he
succeeded so well in the world, Clem, to a great extent, deserted me,
although I was his oldest friend and the friend of his childhood. I
heard that he visited a good many rich persons, that he made much of
them, and they made much of him. He kept up a kind of acquaintance
with me, not by writing to me, but by the very cheap mode of sending
me a newspaper now and then with a marked paragraph in it announcing
the exploits of his school at a cricket-match, or occasionally with a
report of a lecture which he had delivered. He was a decent orator,
and from motives of business if from no other, he not unfrequently
spoke in public. One or two of these lectures wounded me a good
deal. There was one in particular on As You Like It, in which he