“Why are you so secret in your operations?” I asked.  “God forbid that I should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity.  His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men.  At some point of his course—­I know not exactly when or where—­he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.  Oh, my dear friend, beware this error!  If you meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but allow them an opportunity of defending themselves.”

“It does not suit me,” said Hollingsworth.  “Nor is it my duty to do so.”

“I think it is,” replied I.

Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but, like fate, inexorably.

“I will not argue the point,” said he.  “What I desire to know of you is,—­and you can tell me in one word,—­whether I am to look for your cooperation in this great scheme of good?  Take it up with me!  Be my brother in it!  It offers you (what you have told me, over and over again, that you most need) a purpose in life, worthy of the extremest self-devotion,—­worthy of martyrdom, should God so order it!  In this view, I present it to you.  You can greatly benefit mankind.  Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle.  Strike hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man.  There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will,—­ everything that a manly and generous nature should desire!  We shall succeed!  We shall have done our best for this miserable world; and happiness (which never comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares.”

It seemed his intention to say no more.  But, after he had quite broken off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me.

“Coverdale,” he murmured, “there is not the man in this wide world whom I can love as I could you.  Do not forsake me!”

As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost irresistible force.  It is a mystery to me how I withstood it.  But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what was odious.  A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work!  A great black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of

transmuting it into virtue!  Had I but touched his extended hand, Hollingsworth’s magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own conception of all these matters.  But I stood aloof.  I fortified myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations that should have been paramount to every other.