“Forgive me, sir,” said Redclyffe, “but I would rather be the poorest and lowest man in America than have that sentiment.” “But it might change your feeling, perhaps,” suggested the Warden, “if you were one of the privileged class.” “I dare not say that it would not,” said Redclyffe, “for I know I have a thousand weaknesses, and have doubtless as many more that I never suspected myself of. But it seems to me at this moment impossible that I should ever have such an ambition, because I have a sense of meanness in not starting fair, in beginning the world with advantages that my fellows have not.” “Really this is not wise,” said the Warden, bluntly, “How can the start in life be fair for all? Providence arranges it otherwise. Did you yourself,--a gentleman evidently by birth and education,--did you start fair in the race of life?” Redclyffe remembered what his birth, or rather what his first recollected place had been, and reddened. “In birth, certainly, I had no advantages,” said he, and would have explained further but was kept back by invincible reluctance; feeling that the bare fact of his origin in an almshouse would be accepted, while all the inward assurances and imaginations that had reconciled himself to the ugly fact would go for nothing. “But there were advantages, very early in life,” added he, smiling, “which perhaps I ought to have been ashamed to avail myself of.” “An old cobwebby library,--an old dwelling by a graveyard,--an old Doctor, busied with his own fantasies, and entangled in his own cobwebs,--and a little girl for a playmate: these were things that you might lawfully avail yourself of,” said Colcord, unheard by the Warden, who, thinking the conversation had lasted long enough, had paid a slight passing courtesy to the old man, and was now leaving the room. “Do you remain here long?” he added. “If the Warden’s hospitality holds out,” said the American, “I shall be glad; for the place interests me greatly.” “No wonder,” replied Colcord. “And wherefore no wonder?” said Redclyffe, impressed with the idea that there was something peculiar in the tone of the old man’s remark. “Because,” returned the other quietly, “it must be to you especially interesting to see an institution of this kind, whereby one man’s benevolence or penitence is made to take the substance and durability of stone, and last for centuries; whereas, in America, the solemn decrees and resolutions of millions melt away like vapor, and everything shifts like the pomp of sunset clouds; though it may be as pompous as they. Heaven intended the past as a foundation for the present, to keep it from vibrating and being blown away with every breeze.” “But,” said Redclyffe, “I would not see in my country what I see elsewhere,--the Past hanging like a mill-stone round a country’s neck, or encrusted in stony layers over the living form; so that, to all intents and purposes, it is dead.”