Needless to say his advent was a great boon to me, for as he lived in a house I let him quite near by, whenever he had a spare evening he would drop in to dinner, and from our absolutely opposite standpoints we discussed all things human and divine.  Thus I was enabled to sharpen my wits upon the hard steel of his clear intellect which was yet, in a sense, so limited.

I must add that I never converted him to my way of thinking and he never converted me to his, any more than he converted Bastin, for whom, queerly enough, he had a liking.  They pounded away at each other, Bickley frequently getting the best of it in the argument, and when at last Bastin rose to go, he generally made the same remark.  It was: 

“It really is sad, my dear Bickley, to find a man of your intellect so utterly wrongheaded and misguided.  I have convicted you of error at least half a dozen times, and not to confess it is mere pigheadedness.  Good night.  I am sure that Sarah will be sitting up for me.”

“Silly old idiot!” Bickley would say, shaking his fist after him.  “The only way to get him to see the truth would be to saw his head open and pour it in.”

Then we would both laugh.

Such were my two most intimate friends, although I admit it was rather like the equator cultivating close relationships with the north and south poles.  Certainly Bastin was as far from Bickley as those points of the earth are apart, while I. as it were, sat equally distant between the two.  However, we were all very happy together, since in certain characters, there are few things that bind men more closely than profound differences of opinion.

Now I must turn to my more personal affairs.  After all, it is impossible for a man to satisfy his soul, if he has anything of the sort about him which in the remotest degree answers to that description, with the husks of wealth, luxury and indolence, supplemented by occasional theological and other arguments between his friends; Becoming profoundly convinced of this truth, I searched round for something to do and, like Noah’s dove on the waste of waters, found nothing.  Then I asked Bickley and Bastin for their opinions as to my best future course.  Bickley proved a barren draw.  He rubbed his nose and feebly suggested that I might go in for “research work,” which, of course, only represented his own ambitions.  I asked him indignantly how I could do such a thing without any scientific qualifications whatever.  He admitted the difficulty, but replied that I might endow others who had the qualifications.

“In short, become a mulch cow for sucking scientists,” I replied, and broke off the conversation.

Bastin’s idea was, first, that I should teach in a Sunday School; secondly, that if this career did not satisfy all my aspirations, I might be ordained and become a missionary.