“Are you going to do this, Arthur Brent, or are you not? Are you going to do the high duty that lies before you, or are you going to put it aside for some imagined duty which would be of less consequence even if it were real? Is it not better worth your while to save Dorothy than to save any number of life’s failures who dwell in New York’s tenements? Are not Dorothy South’s mind and soul and superb capacities of greater consequence than the lives of thousands of those whose squalor and unwholesome surroundings are after all the fruit of their own hereditary indolence and stupidity? Is not one such life as hers of greater worth in the world, than thousands or even millions of those for whose amelioration you had planned to moil and toil? You know, Arthur, that I have little sympathy with the thought that those who fail in life should be coddled into a comfort that they have not earned. I do not believe that you can rescue dulness of mind from the consequences of its own inertia. Nine tenths of the poverty that suffers is the direct consequence of laziness and drink. The other tenth is sufficiently cared for. I am a heretic on this subject, I suppose. I do not think that such a man as you are should devote his life to an attempt to uplift those who have sunk into squalor through lack of fitness for anything better. Your abilities may be much better employed in helping worthier lives. I never did see why we should send missionaries to the inferior races, when all our efforts might be so much more profitably employed for the betterment of worthier people. Why didn’t we let the red Indians perish as they deserve to do, and spend the money we have fruitlessly thrown away upon them, in providing better educational opportunities for a higher race? “The moral of all this is that you have found your true mission in the rescue of Dorothy South from a fate she does not deserve. I’m going to help you in doing that, but I will not tell you my plans till you get through with your fever crusade and have time to listen attentively to my superior wisdom. “In the meantime you are to humble yourself by reflecting upon your great need of such counsel as mine and your great good fortune in having a supply of it at hand. “I hope your patients continue to do credit to your medical skill and to Dorothy’s excellent nursing. I have sent Dinah over this morning with some delicacies for the convalescent among them, and in the afternoon I shall go over to the camp myself and steal Dorothy from them and you, long enough to give her a good long drive. “Always sincerely your Friend, “EDMONIA BANNISTER.” XXII THE INSTITUTION OF THE DUELLO