s defrauding you out of some of your expected
pleasure to have a dismal companion. But as I have commenced by being
frank I may as well continue. I am dissatisfied with myself. I ought not
to have come on this excursion. The truth is, I meant to make Chautauqua
a help to me. I need the help badly enough. I am in the rush and whirl
of business all the time at home. This is the only two weeks in the year
that I am free, and I wanted to make it a great spiritual help to me. I
know very well that merely hovering around in such an atmosphere as that
at Chautauqua is a help to the Christian, and I came with the full
intention of taking in all that I could get of this sort of inspiration,
and it chafes me that so early in the meeting I have been led away
against my inclinations by a little pressure that I might have resisted,
and done no harm to any one. My cousin had the same sort of influence
brought to bear on him, and it had no more effect on him than it would
on a stone."

He stopped, and seemed to give Eurie a chance to answer, but she was not
inclined, and he added, as if he had just thought his words an implied
reproach: "I can understand how, to you young ladies of comparative
leisure, with plenty of time to cultivate the spiritual side of your
natures, it should seem an unnecessary and perhaps a wearisome thing to
attend all these meetings; but you can not understand what it is to be
in the whirl of business life, never having time to think, hardly having
time to pray, and to get away from it all and go to heaven, as it were,
for a fortnight, is something to be coveted by us as a great help."

Once more he waited for Eurie's answer, but it was very different from
what he had seemed to expect.

"You might just as well talk to me in the Greek language; I should
understand quite as well what you have been saying; I don't think _I
have_ any spiritual side to my nature; at least it has never been
cultivated if I have; and Chautauqua to me is just the place in which
to have a good free easy time; go where I like and stay as long as I
like; and for once in my life not be bound by conventional forms. If
heaven is anything like that I shouldn't object to it; but I'm sure your
and my idea of it would differ. There, I've been frank now, and shocked
you, I know. I see it in every line of your face. Poor fellow! I don't
know what you will do, for there isn't a single one of us who has the
least idea what you mean by that sort o