“'Who is this fellow?' cried the Rector, outraged at being thus replied to. 'Where did he come from?'
“'From a life of struggle and hardship,' said I, 'that if you had been exposed to and confronted with, you had died of starvation, despite all your wise saws on thrift and providence.'
“'Gracious mercy!' muttered he, 'can this be—' and then he stopped; and beckoning me to follow him into an inner room, he retired.
“'Do I speak to Dr. Layton?' asked he, curtly, when we were alone.
“'I was that man,' said I. 'I am nothing now.'
“'By what unhappy causes have you come to this?'
“'The lack of that same thrift you were so eloquent about, perhaps. I was one of those who could write, speak, invent, and discover; but I was never admitted a brother of the guild of those who save. The world, however, has always its compensations, and I met thrifty men. Some of them stole my writings, and some filched my discoveries. They have prospered, and live to illustrate your pleasant theory. But I have not come here to make my confessions; I would learn of you certain things about what was once my home.'
“He was most kind,—he would have been more than kind to me had I let him; but I would accept of nothing. 'I did not even break bread under his roof, though I had fasted for a day and a half. He had a few objects left with him to give me, which I took,—the old pocket-book one of them,—and then I went away.”
The old man's narrative was henceforth one long series of struggles with fortune. He concealed none of those faults by which he had so often wrecked his better life. Hating and despising the companionship to which his reduced condition had brought him, he professed to believe there was less degradation in drunkenness than in such association. Through all he said, in fact, there was the old defiant spirit of early days, a scornful rejection of all assistance, and even, in failure and misery, a self-reliance that seemed invincible. He had come to America by the invitation of a theatrical manager, who had failed, leaving him in the direst necessity and want.
The dawn of day found him still telling of his wayward life, its sorrows, its struggles, and defeats.