Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 | Page 8

a woman of immense wealth, many years his senior. At the
end of three years she very considerately took herself off and left him
to the enjoyment of his freedom and riches. If he had remained poor he
might from time to time have rubbed at random against the truth, and
would be able to recognize the touch of it. But he wraps himself in his
money as in a wadded dressing-gown, and goes trundling through life
on his little gold wheels. The greater part of his career, from the time of
his marriage till about ten years ago, was spent in Europe, which,
superficially, he knows very well. He has lived in fifty places, known
thousands of people, and spent a very large fortune. At one time, I
believe, he spent considerably too much, trembled for an instant on the
verge of a pecuniary crash, but recovered himself, and found himself
more frightened than hurt, yet audibly recommended to lower his pitch.
He passed five years in a species of penitent seclusion on the lake of--I
forget what (his genius seems to be partial to lakes), and laid the basis
of his present magnificent taste for literature. I can't call him anything
but magnificent in this respect, so long as he must have his punctuation
done by a _nature distinguée_. At the close of this period, by economy,
he had made up his losses. His turning the screw during those relatively
impecunious years represents, I am pretty sure, the only act of
resolution of his life. It was rendered possible by his morbid, his
actually pusillanimous dread of poverty; he doesn't feel safe without
half a million between him and starvation. Meanwhile he had turned
from a young man into an old man; his health was broken, his spirit
was jaded, and I imagine, to do him justice, that he began to feel certain
natural, filial longings for this dear American mother of us all. They
say the most hopeless truants and triflers have come to it. He came to it,

at all events; he packed up his books and pictures and gimcracks, and
bade farewell to Europe. This house which he now occupies belonged
to his wife's estate. She had, for sentimental reasons of her own,
commended it to his particular care. On his return he came to see it,
liked it, turned a parcel of carpenters and upholsterers into it, and by
inhabiting it for nine years transformed it into the perfect dwelling
which I find it. Here he has spent all his time, with the exception of a
usual winter's visit to New York--a practice recently discontinued,
owing to the increase of his ailments and the projection of these famous
memoirs. His life has finally come to be passed in comparative solitude.
He tells of various distant relatives, as well as intimate friends of both
sexes, who used formerly to be entertained at his cost; but with each of
them, in the course of time, he seems to have succeeded in quarrelling.
Throughout life, evidently, he has had capital fingers for plucking off
parasites. Rich, lonely, and vain, he must have been fair game for the
race of social sycophants and cormorants; and it's much to the credit of
his sharpness and that instinct of self-defence which nature bestows
even on the weak, that he has not been despoiled and _exploité_.
Apparently they have all been bunglers. I maintain that something is to
be done with him still. But one must work in obedience to certain
definite laws. Doctor Jones, his physician, tells me that in point of fact
he has had for the past ten years an unbroken series of favorites,
_protégés_, heirs presumptive; but that each, in turn, by some fatally
false movement, has spilled his pottage. The doctor declares, moreover,
that they were mostly very common people. Gradually the old man
seems to have developed a preference for two or three strictly exquisite
intimates, over a throng of your vulgar pensioners. His tardy literary
schemes, too--fruit of his all but sapless senility--have absorbed more
and more of his time and attention. The end of it all is, therefore, that
Theodore and I have him quite to ourselves, and that it behooves us to
hold our porringers straight.
Poor, pretentious old simpleton! It's not his fault, after all, that he
fancies himself a great little man. How are you to judge of the stature of
mankind when men have forever addressed you on their knees? Peace
and joy to his innocent fatuity! He believes himself the most rational of
men; in fact, he's the most superstitious. He fancies himself a
philosopher, an inquirer, a discoverer. He has not yet discovered that he

is a humbug, that Theodore is a prig, and that I am an adventurer.