"Ah! I see we lack a ground to meet upon," said the Warden. "We can never truly understand each other. What you have last mentioned is one of our inner mysteries. It is not a thing to be reasoned about, but to be felt,--to be born within one; and I uphold it to be a generous sentiment, and good for the human heart."
"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."