father whether he began a little sooner or a little later to earn. The
governor knew, he said to himself, that to earn ought not to be a man's
first object in life, even when necessity compelled him to make it first
in order of time, which was not the case with him! But he did not ask
himself whether he had substituted a better object. A greater man than
himself, he reflected--no less a man, indeed, than Milton--had never
earned a dinner till after he was thirty years of age! He did not
consider how and to what ends Milton had all the time been diligent. He
was no student yet of men's lives; he was interested almost only in
their imaginations, and not half fastidious enough as to whether those
imaginations ran upon the rails of truth or not. He was rapidly filling
his mind with the good and bad of the literature of his country, but he
had not yet gone far in distinguishing between the bad and the good in
it. Books were to him the geological deposits of the literary forces. He
pursued his acquaintance with them to nourish the literary faculty in
himself. They afforded him atmosphere and stimulant and store of matter.
He was in full training for the profession that cultivates literature
for and upon literature, and neither for nor upon truth.




CHAPTER VII.


A CHANGE.

A big stone fell suddenly into the smooth pool of Walter's conditions. A
letter from his father brought the news that the bank where he had
deposited his savings had proved but a swollen mushroom. He had lost