the rest of his time for what he regarded as the proper concerns of a
gentleman--attending to social "duties," reading pretentious books, looking
at the pictures and listening to the music decreed fashionable.

They charge that I put him "in a hole." In fact, I found him at the bottom
of a deep pit he had dug for himself; and when he first met me he was,
without having the sense to realize it, just about to go smash, with not a
penny for his old age. As soon as I had got this fact clear of the tangle,
I showed it to him.

"My God, what is to become of _me_?" he said, That was his only
thought--not, what is to become of my wife and daughter; but, what is to
become of "_me_!" I do not blame him for this. Naturally enough,
people who have always been used to everything become, unconsciously,
monsters of egotism and selfishness; it is natural, too, that they should
imagine themselves liberal and generous if they give away occasionally
something that costs them, at most, nothing more serious than the foregoing
of some extravagant luxury or other. I recite his remark simply to show
what manner of man he was, what sort of creature I had to deal with.

I offered to help him, and I did help him. Is there any one, knowing
anything of the facts of life, who will censure me when I admit that
I--with deliberation--simply tided him over, did not make for him and
present to him a fortune? What chance should I have had, if I had been so
absurdly generous to a man who deserved nothing but punishment for his
selfish and bigoted mode of life? I took away his worst burdens; but I left
him more than he could carry without my help. And it was not until he had
appealed, in vain to all his social friends to relieve him of the necessity
of my aid, not until he realized that I was his only hope of escaping a
sharp comedown from luxury to very modest comfort in a flat somewhere--not