It is the rich, who find time drag remorselessly on their
hands, who have desperately to invent occupations and a whirl of
amusements, who keep pursuing shadows they can never lay hold of, who
are really in a piteous case; and I suppose you take credit to yourself,
Linn, my boy, that you are one of the distractions that help them to
lighten the unbearable weariness of their life. Well," he continued, in
his rambling way, "it isn't quite what I had looked forward to; I had
looked forward to something different for you. I can remember, when we
used to have our long Sunday walks in those days, what splendid
ambitions you had for yourself, and how you were all burning to
begin--the organist of Winstead Church was to produce his Hallelujah
Chorus, and the nations were to listen; and the other night, when I was
in your room at the theatre, when I saw you smearing your face and
decking yourself out for exhibition before a lot of fashionable idlers,
I could not help saying to myself, 'And this is what Linn Moore has come
to!'"
"Yes, that is what Linn Moore has come to," the other said, with entire
good-nature. "And what has Maurice Mangan come to? I can remember when
Maurice Mangan was to be a great poet, a great metaphysician, a great--I
don't know what.
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