r
with her wonted demureness, "come here; no, get me a glass of water.
Kate! I shall die of that girl. She does some idiotic thing, and then
she looks in here with that contented, beaming look. There is an air of
baseless happiness about her that drives me nearly frantic."

"Never mind about that," persisted Kate. "Tell me about Philip's father.
What was the matter with him?"

"My dear," Aunt Jane at last answered,--with that fearful moderation
to which she usually resorted when even her stock of superlatives was
exhausted,--"he belonged to a family for whom truth possessed even less
than the usual attractions."

This neat epitaph implied the erection of a final tombstone over the
whole race, and Kate asked no more.

Meantime Malbone sat at the western door with Harry, and was running
on with one of his tirades, half jest, half earnest, against American
society.

"In America," he said, "everything which does not tend to money is
thought to be wasted, as our Quaker neighbor thinks the children's
croquet-ground wasted, because it is not a potato field."

"Not just!" cried Harry. "Nowhere is there more respect for those who
give their lives to intellectual pursuits."

"What are intellectual pursuits?" said Philip. "Editing daily
newspapers? Teaching arithmetic to children? I see no others flourishing
hereabouts."

"Science and literature," answered Harry.

"Who cares for literature in America," said Philip, "after a man rises
three inches above the newspaper level? Nobody reads Thoreau; only an
insignificant fraction read Emerson, or even Hawthorne. The majority of
people have hardly even heard their names. What inducement has a writer?
Nobody has any weight in America who is not in Congress, and nobody gets
into Congress without the necessity of bribing or button-holing men whom
he despises."

"But you do not care for public life?" said Harry.

"No," said Malbone, "therefore this does not trouble me, but it troubles
you. I am content. My digestion is good. I can always amuse myself. Why
are you not satisfied?"

"Because you are not," said Harry. "You are dissatisfied with men, and
so you care chiefly to amuse yourself with women and children."

"I dare say," said Malbone, carelessly. "They are usually less
ungraceful and talk better grammar."

"But American life does not mean grace nor grammar. We are all living
for the future. Rough work now, and the graces by and by."

"That is what we Americans alwa