Of course when I made Mr. Trimblerigg, though I had shaped him--I will not say to my liking, but at least to my satisfaction--I did not foresee how he would turn out. It is not my custom to look ahead. I can, to be sure, do so when I please: but that makes the _dénouement_ so dull. I prefer, therefore--and have now made it a rule--that my creations shall, in what they do, come upon me as a surprise--pleasant or the reverse. For since I have given them free-will, let me also have the benefit of it: let them make their own plans, their own careers,--attributing to me, if they must, those features of both for which they do not feel themselves responsible; and let me (in the moment when they think to have fulfilled themselves) experience that small stimulus of novelty which the infinite variety and individuality of my creatures is always capable of providing. For it is this spice of novelty alone which keeps me from being unutterably disinterested in the workings of what theologians are pleased to call ‘the moral purpose of the universe.’ So it was that, having shaped Mr. Trimblerigg to my satisfaction, I let him go. And as, with his future in his own very confident hands, he went, I did not for the moment trouble to look after him. When I say that I shaped him to my satisfaction, I am speaking merely as a craftsman. I knew that I had made a very clever man. As to liking him, that had nothing to do with craftsmanship, but would depend entirely on what he did with himself--how he appealed to me as a student of life, when--laying aside my rôle of maker, I became merely the observer. It is always an interesting experiment whether I shall be drawn to my creations before they become drawn to me. Sometimes I find that they interest me enormously, even while denying me with their last breath. But the unrequited affections of a god have always an element of comedy; for though, in the spiritual direction, one’s creations may take a way of their own, they are never as quit of us as they suppose; and when they know it least they come back to us for inspection and renovation. Even the soul that thinks itself lost is not so lost as to leave one unaware of its condition; though it may have ceased to call, its address is still known. In Mr. Trimblerigg’s case it was all the other way--from the moment that he discovered me he never let me alone; though I had cast him forth like bread upon the waters, not expecting to see him again for many days, he came back to me early, and from that time on gave me the advantage of his intimate and varying acquaintance to the very end. I wonder to myself sometimes whether I tried him as much as he tried me, and whether he managed to like me up to the last. This at least I found--that by the time he was five years old, whether I liked him or not, Mr. Trimblerigg liked me; and the reason for his liking was simple--he found me useful.