the impish schoolboy, and he himself grinding and fuming and

impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. You marvel

at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute

of charm and dignity; and then you call to memory that had he

chosen, had he ceased to be a miser, he could have been freed at

once from these trials, and might have built himself a castle and

gone escorted by a squadron. For the love of more recondite joys,

which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we should envy, the man

had willingly forgone both comfort and consideration. "His mind to

him a kingdom was"; and sure enough, digging into that mind, which

seems at first a dust-heap, we unearth some priceless jewels. For

Dancer must have had the love of power and the disdain of using it,

a noble character in itself; disdain of many pleasures, a chief

part of what is commonly called wisdom; disdain of the inevitable

end, that finest trait of mankind; scorn of men's opinions, another

element of virtue; and at the back of all, a conscience just like

yours and mine, whining like a cur, swindling like a thimble-

rigger, but still pointing (there or there-about) to some

conventional standard. Here were a cabinet portrait to which

Hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne either,

for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us

that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his

vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable,

insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the

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