months; and, indeed, a young man,
earnest, enthusiastic and sensible, who stopped over night at Dr.
Mitchell's, and had been a delighted guest at the Chautauqua Assembly a
year before, had sown the first seeds that resulted in this trip.

He of course could tell the exact route and the necessary steps to be
taken; but it had been no part of Eurie's wisdom to ask about the
journey thither; she knew how many boats were on the lake, and what kind
of fish could be caught in it, but the most direct way to reach it was a
minor matter. So there they were, simply blundering along, in the belief
that the railroad officials knew their business, and would get them
somewhere sometime.

As the day waned, and the road became more unknown to them, and their
weariness grew upon them, they fell to indulging in those stale jokes
that young ladies will perpetrate when they don't know what else to do.
As they declared, with much laughter, and many smart ways of saying it,
that Chautauqua was a myth of Eurie's brain, or that she had been the
dupe of the fine young theological student who had chanced her way and
that the search for paradise would come to naught, perhaps it was not
all joking; for, as the hours passed and they journeyed on, hearing
nothing about the place of which for the last few weeks they had
thought so much, a queer feeling began to steal over them that there
really was no such spot, and that they were all a set of idiots.

"I thought we should have been there by this time, and regularly
established at housekeeping," Marion said, as they picked up baskets and
bundles and prepared to change cars; "and here we are making another
change. This is the third this afternoon, or is it the thirteenth? and
who knows where Brocton is or what it is? Is anybody sure that it is in
this hemisphere? Eurie, you are certain that your theological student
did not cross the Atlantic in order to reach his elysium?"

"Brocton is _here_," Eurie said, as they climbed the steps of the car.
"I see the name on that building yonder; though whether 'here' is
America or Asia I am unable to say. I think we have come overland, but
it is so long since we started I may have forgotten."

But at this point they checked their nonsense and began to get up a new
interest in existence. They were among a different class of
people--earnest, eager people, who seemed to have no thought of yawns
or weariness. Camp-stools abounded, with here and there a bundle lo