can see that he is disappointed. I have even less to show, after all
these years, than he had hoped. Heaven help us! little enough it must
strike him as being. What a contradiction there is in our being friends
at all! I believe we shall end with hating each other. It's all very
well now--our agreeing to differ, for we haven't opposed interests. But
if we should _really_ clash, the situation would be warm! I wonder, as
it is, that Theodore keeps his patience with me. His education since we
parted should tend logically to make him despise me. He has studied,
thought, suffered, loved--loved those very plain sisters and nieces.
Poor me! how should I be virtuous? I have no sisters, plain or
pretty!--nothing to love, work for, live for. My dear Theodore, if you
are going one of these days to despise me and drop me--in the name of
comfort, come to the point at once, and make an end of our state of
tension.

He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. His attitude toward the
_bonhomme_ quite passes my comprehension. It's the queerest jumble of
contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him--yet respects and
admires him. It all comes of the poor boy's shrinking New England
conscience. He's afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest,
forsooth, they should look over his neighbor's wall. He'll not
understand that he may as well sacrifice the old reprobate for a lamb as
for a sheep. His view of the gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue
of cobwebs--a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wire-drawn charities, and
hair-breadth 'scapes from utter damnation, and sudden platitudes of
generosity--fit, all of it, to make an angel curse!

"The man's a perfect egotist and fool," say I, "but I like him." Now
Theodore likes him--or rather wants to like him; but he can't reconcile
it to his self-respect--fastidious deity!--to like a fool. Why the deuce