"If you could be transformed into a woman, as the old fairy tale goes, you would make an excellent wife for Weitzel Shrumpf, while the snarling dog represents the respectable portion of the community, that will have nothing to do with me whatever. When my pen, however, has brought name and fame, the churlish world will be ready to fawn, and forget that it tried to trample me into the mire of the street until I became a part of it. Curses on the world! I would give half my life for the genius of a Byron, that I migt heap scorn on society until it writhed under the intolerable burden. Oh that I had a wit as keen and quick as the lightning, so that I might transfix and shrivel up the well-dressed monsters that now shun me as if I had a contagion!" From a heart overflowing with bitterness and impotent protest against the condition to which his own act had reduced him, Haldane was learning to indulge in such bitter soliloquy with increasing frequency. It is ever the tendency of those who find themselves at odds with the world, and in conflict with the established order of things, to inveigh with communistic extravagance against the conservatism and wary prudence which they themselves would have maintained had all remained well with them. The Haldane who had meditated "gloomy grandeur" would not have looked at the poor, besmirched Haldane who had just accepted what the world would regard as charity. The only reason why the proud, aristocratic youth could tolerate and make excuse for the disreputable character who was glad to eat the dinner given by Jeremiah Growther, was that this same ill-conditioned fellow was himself. Thus every bitter thing which he said against society was virtually self-condemnation. And yet his course was most natural, for men almost invariably forget that their views change with their fortunes. Thousands will at once form a positive opinion of a subject from its aspect seen at their standpoint, where one will walk around and scan it on all sides. Either to spite himself, or to show his confidence in one whom others regarded as utterly unworthy of trust, Mr. Growther remained away sufficiently long for Haldane to have made up a bundle of all the valuables in the house, and have escaped. The young man soon discovered that there were valuables, but anything like vulgar theft never entered his mind. That people should believe him capable of acting the part of a common thief was one of the strange things in his present experience which he could not understand.