would find dumped down outside his door in the early morning a half-cord
of wood or a bag of flour.

It could not be said that Jean Jacques did not enjoy his own generosity.
His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his
own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age;
but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an
obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent
summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and
history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science
marched over too jagged a road for his tender intellectual feet; the
wild places where it led dismayed him. History also meant numberless
dates and facts. Perhaps he could have managed the dates, for he was
quick at figures, but the facts were like bees in their hive,--he could
scarcely tell one from another by looking at them.

So it was that Jean Jacques kept turning his eyes, as he thought, to the
everlasting meaning of things, to "the laws of Life and the decrees of
Destiny." He was one of those who had found, as he thought, what he
could do, and was sensible enough to do it. Let the poor fellows, who
gave themselves to science, trouble their twisted minds with trigonometry
and the formula of some grotesque chemical combination; let the dull
people rub their noses in the ink of Greek and Latin, which was no use
for everyday consumption; let the heads of historians ache with the
warring facts of the lives of nations; it all made for sleep. But
philosophy--ah, there was a field where a man could always use knowledge
got from books or sorted out of his own experiences!

It happened, therefore, that Jean Jacques, who not too vaguely realized
that there was reputation to be got from being thought a philosopher,