“This may seem strange to some of my friends,” said Delesof to himself, “but how seldom it is that I can do anything for anyone beside myself! and I ought to thank God for a chance when one presents itself. I will not send him away. I will do everything, at least everything that I can, to help him. Maybe he is not absolutely crazy, but only inclined to get drunk. It certainly will not cost me very much. Where one is, there is always enough to satisfy two. Let him live with me awhile, and then we will find him a place, or get him up a concert; we’ll help him off the shoals, and then there will be time enough to see what will come of it.” An agreeable sense of self-satisfaction came over him after making this resolution.

“Certainly I am not a bad man: I might say I am far from being a bad man,” he thought. “I might go so far as to say that I am a good man, when I compare myself with others.”

He was just dropping off to sleep when the sound of opening doors, and steps in the anteroom, roused him again. “Well, shall I treat him rather severely?” he asked himself; “I suppose that is best, and I ought to do it.”