"It makes me ashamed."
"Of what?"
"Myself."
"Why?"
"That I should have lived to be thirty-two years old, and never have done anything, or found any way to be of any good in the world! There isn't a butterfly of less use than I!"
"You weren't made to be of use," said Tom.
"Upon my word, my dear fellow, you have said the most disparaging thing, I hope, that ever was said of me! You cannot better that statement, if you think an hour! You mean it of me as a human being, I trust? not as an individual? In the one case it would be indeed melancholy, but in the other it would be humiliating. You take the race, not the personal view. The practical view is, that what is of no use had better not be in existence. Look here—here we are at Murano; I had not noticed it. Shall we land, and see things by moonlight? or go back to Venice?"
"Back, and have dinner," said Tom.
"By way of prolonging this existence, which to you is burdensome and to me is unsatisfactory. Where is the logic of that?"
But they went back, and had a very good dinner too.