 pleasure to share the chances of the road. Newman's
comrade, whose name was Babcock, was a young Unitarian minister; a small, spare,
neatly-attired man, with a strikingly candid physiognomy. He was a native of
Dorchester, Massachusetts, and had spiritual charge of a small congregation in
another suburb of the New England metropolis. His digestion was weak, and he
lived chiefly on Graham bread and hominy - a regimen to which he was so much
attached that his tour seemed to him destined to be blighted when, on landing on
the Continent, he found that these delicacies did not flourish under the table
d'hôte system. In Paris he had purchased a bag of hominy at an establishment
which called itself an American Agency, and at which the New York illustrated
papers were also to be procured, and he had carried it about with him, and shown
extreme serenity and fortitude in the somewhat delicate position of having his
hominy prepared for him and served at anomalous hours, at the hotels he
successively visited. Newman had once spent a morning, in the course of
business, at Mr. Babcock's birthplace, and, for reasons too recondite to unfold,
his visit there always assumed in his mind a jocular cast. To carry out his
joke, which certainly seems poor so long as it is not explained, he used often
to address his companion as Dorchester. Fellow-travellers very soon grow
intimate; but it is highly improbable that at home these extremely dissimilar
characters would have found any very convenient points of contact. They were,
indeed, as different as possible. Newman, who never reflected on such matters,
accepted the situation with great equanimity, but Babcock used to meditate over
it privately; used often, indeed, to retire to his room early in the evening for
the express purpose of considering it conscientiously and impartially. He was
not sure that it was a good thing for him to associate with our hero, whose way
of taking life was so little his own. Newman was an excellent, generous fellow;
Mr. Babcock sometimes said to himself that he was a noble fellow, and,
certainly, it was impossible not to like him. But would it not be desirable to
try to exert an influence upon him, to try to quicken his moral life and sharpen
his sense of duty? He liked everything, he accepted everything, he found
amusement in everything; he was not discriminating, he had not a high tone. The
young man from Dorchester accused Newman of a fault which he considered very
grave, and which he did his best to avoid
