"I fear, my dear cousin, that you have infected Kenelm with your selfish ideas on the nuptial state. He does not seem inclined to marry,--eh?" "Not that I know of." "What sort of girl is Cecilia Travers?" "One of those superior girls who are not likely to tower into that terrible giantess called a 'superior woman.' A handsome, well-educated, sensible young lady, not spoiled by being an heiress; in fine, just the sort of girl whom you could desire to fix on for a daughter-in-law." "And you don't think Kenelm has a fancy for her?" "Honestly speaking, I do not." "Any counter-attraction? There are some things in which sons do not confide in their fathers. You have never heard that Kenelm has been a little wild?" "Wild he is, as the noble savage who ran in the woods," said Cousin Mivers. "You frighten me!" "Before the noble savage ran across the squaws, and was wise enough to run away from them. Kenelm has run away now somewhere." "Yes, he does not tell me where, nor do they know at his lodgings. A heap of notes on his table and no directions where they are to be forwarded. On the whole, however, he has held his own in London society,--eh?" "Certainly! he has been more courted than most young men, and perhaps more talked of. Oddities generally are." "You own he has talents above the average? Do you not think he will make a figure in the world some day, and discharge that debt to the literary stores or the political interests of his country, which alas, I and my predecessors, the other Sir Peters, failed to do; and for which I hailed his birth, and gave him the name of Kenelm?" "Upon my word," answered Mivers,--who had now finished his breakfast, retreated to an easy-chair, and taken from the chimney-piece one of his famous trabucos,--"upon my word, I can't guess; if some great reverse of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood, or if some other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash in that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stimulants to definite action,--poverty and vanity." "Surely there have been great men who were neither poor nor vain?" "I doubt it. But vanity is a ruling motive that takes many forms and many aliases: call it ambition, call it love of fame, still its substance is the same,--the desire of applause carried into fussiness of action." "There may be the desire for abstract truth without care for applause." "Certainly. A philosopher on a desert island may amuse himself by meditating on the distinction between light and heat. But if, on returning to the world, he publish the result of his meditations, vanity steps in and desires to be applauded." "Nonsense, Cousin Mivers, he may rather desire to be of use and benefit to mankind. You don't deny that there is such a thing as philanthropy."