“Minnie! excuse me for interrupting you; but can you find nothing but rheumatism to talk about?  It is of all subjects the least tasteful to me.”

“My dear Fred!” And there Minnie stopped.  She was both hurt and puzzled.

Fred laughed.  His good-humor returned at the sight of her mystified face, and the opportunity of explaining some of his theories of morals.

“In the first place, Minnie, what do we live for?”

Minnie had not thought.  She was only eighteen, and had acted.

“Well, I dare say you have never considered the subject.  I have, a great deal.  You see, Minnie, we are born to pursue happiness.  You allow that.”

“Yes,—­I suppose so,” said Minnie.

“Well, then, if I look at the wrong thing, and call it happiness, it is my mistake, and I only shall pay for it.  You find your happiness in an active life and works of mercy.  Very well, do so.  You devote a certain part of your income, small as it is, to that sort of pleasure.  I devote mine to my pleasures.  They are different from yours.  You might call them selfish.  What then?  So are yours.  I don’t say you are not modest and humble, and all that; but you do enjoy your old women, and your fussy charity-schools.  Very well.  That is all I do with my drawing, my lounging, my smoking, my reading.  And I think, Minnie,” added Fred, laughing, “I have the added grace of humility; for I am far from making a merit of my sort of life.”

“No,—­it would be difficult to make a merit of it,” said Minnie.

That was clear enough.  Fred loved to have her for an auditor.  So long as she could not see over him, he was as good as infinite to her.

“In the first place, Minnie, you must allow, it is a duty to surround ourselves with the beautiful in all things.  It conduces to the highest self-culture; and self-culture is our first duty.”

“Is it?  Surely, it cannot be!  Oh, you mean we ought rather to attend to our own faults than those of others?”

“I mean as I say.  Self-culture is our first duty, both moral and intellectual.  I might add, also, that to take care of Number One is a dictate of common prudence.  You allow that?  Well.  First, then, the body cared for, all right.  Then the morals,—­attend to your own, and let other people’s alone.  Then, thirdly, your intellect.  Now, then, it becomes a positive duty, ‘the duty that lies nearest to me,’ to cultivate that.  And to do that, Minnie, I am obliged to draw on myself to my very last dollar.  To refine the taste by familiarity with the highest objects of taste, to appreciate Art, to develop the intellect, to bring one’s self to conceive and grasp the Universal, the Beautiful, to raise one’s self in the scale of created things by creative fancies imitating the Highest,—­ah! in fact, Minnie, self-culture becomes a duty,—­indeed, our first duty.”

Something in Minnie’s face—­it was not a smile—­made Fred turn the subject a little.