’Do you know what I ought to have been?—­a schoolmaster.  That is to say, if I wished to do any work of direct good to my fellows in the world.  I could have taught boys well, better than I shall ever do anything else.  I could not only have taught them—­the ‘gerund-grinding’ of Thomas Carlyle—­but could have inspired them with love of learning, at all events such as were capable of being so inspired.  My class of working men in Lambeth exercised this faculty to some extent.  When I was teaching them English Literature, I was doing, as far as it went, good and sound work.  When I drifted into ’Thoughts for the Present’—­Heaven forgive me!—­I made an ass of myself, that’s the long and short of it.  My ears tingle as I remember those evenings.

’I am infinitely more human than I was; I can even laugh heartily at American humour, and that I take to be a sign of health.  Health is what I have gained.  The devotion of eight or ten hours a day to the work of the factory has been the best medicine any one could have prescribed to me.  It was you who prescribed it, and it was your crowning act of kindness to me, dear Mrs. Ormonde.  It is possible that I have grown coarser; indeed, I know that I associate on terms of equality and friendliness with men from whom I should formerly have shrunk.  I can get angry, and stand on my rights, and bluster if need be, and on the whole I think I am no worse for that.  My ear is not offended if I hear myself called ‘boss;’ why should it be? it is a word as well as another.  Nay, I have even felt something like excitement when listening to political speeches, in which frequent mention was made of ‘the great State of Pennsylvania.’  Well, it is a great State, or the phrase has no meaning in any application.  Will not this early life of the New World some day be studied with reverence and enthusiasm?  I try to see things as they are.

’Social problems are here in plenty.  Indeed, it looks very much as if America would sooner have reached an acute stage of social conflict than the old countries; naturally, as it is the refuge of these who abandon the old world in disgust.  American equality is a mere phrase; there is as much brutal injustice here as elsewhere.  But I can no longer rave on the subject; the injustice is a fact, and only other facts will replace it; I concern myself only with facts.  And the great fact of all is the contemptibleness of average humanity.  I will submit for your reverent consideration the name of a great American philanthropist—­Cornelius Vanderbilt.  Personally he was a disgusting brute; ignorant, base, a boor in his manners, a blackguard in his language; he had little if any natural affection, and to those who offended him he was a relentless barbarian.  Yet the man was a great philanthropist, and became so by the piling up of millions of dollars.  Of course he did that for his own vulgar satisfaction, though personally he could not use the money when he