“You will never understand it, Pinkerton,” I would say.  “You look to the result, you want to see some profit of your endeavours:  that is why you could never learn to paint, if you lived to be Methusalem.  The result is always a fizzle:  the eyes of the artist are turned in; he lives for a frame of mind.  Look at Romney, now.  There is the nature of the artist.  He hasn’t a cent; and if you offered him to-morrow the command of an army, or the presidentship of the United States, he wouldn’t take it, and you know he wouldn’t.”

“I suppose not,” Pinkerton would cry, scouring his hair with both his hands; “and I can’t see why; I can’t see what in fits he would be after, not to; I don’t seem to rise to these views.  Of course, it’s the fault of not having had advantages in early life; but, Loudon, I’m so miserably low that it seems to me silly.  The fact is,” he might add with a smile, “I don’t seem to have the least use for a frame of mind without square meals; and you can’t get it out of my head that it’s a man’s duty to die rich, if he can.”

“What for?” I asked him once.

“O, I don’t know,” he replied.  “Why in snakes should anybody want to be a sculptor, if you come to that?  I would love to sculp myself.  But what I can’t see is why you should want to do nothing else.  It seems to argue a poverty of nature.”

Whether or not he ever came to understand me—­and I have been so tossed about since then that I am not very sure I understand myself—­he soon perceived that I was perfectly in earnest; and after about ten days of argument, suddenly dropped the subject, and announced that he was wasting capital, and must go home at once.  No doubt he should have gone long before, and had already lingered over his intended time for the sake of our companionship and my misfortune; but man is so unjustly minded that the very fact, which ought to have disarmed, only embittered my vexation.  I resented his departure in the light of a desertion; I would not say, but doubtless I betrayed it; and something hang-dog in the man’s face and bearing led me to believe he was himself remorseful.  It is certain at least that, during the time of his preparations, we drew sensibly apart—­a circumstance that I recall with shame.  On the last day, he had me to dinner at a restaurant which he knew I had formerly frequented, and had only forsworn of late from considerations of economy.  He seemed ill at ease; I was myself both sorry and sulky; and the meal passed with little conversation.

“Now, Loudon,” said he, with a visible effort, after the coffee was come and our pipes lighted, “you can never understand the gratitude and loyalty I bear you.  You don’t know what a boon it is to be taken up by a man that stands on the pinnacle of civilization; you can’t think how it’s refined and purified me, how it’s appealed to my spiritual nature; and I want to tell you that I would die at your door like a dog.”

I don’t know what answer I tried to make, but he cut me short.