eal days off."

My Uncle Peter's voice had grown very deep and gentle while he was
saying these things. He sat looking far away into the rosy heart of the
fire, where the bright blaze had burned itself out, and the delicate
flamelets of blue and violet were playing over the glowing, crumbling
logs. It seemed as if he had forgotten where we were, and gone
a-wandering into some distant region of memories and dreams. I almost
doubted whether to call him back; the silence was so full of
comfortable and friendly intercourse.

"Well," said I, after a while, "you are an incorrigible moralist, but
certainly a most unconventional one. The orthodox would never accept
your philosophy. They would call you a hedonist, or something equally
dreadful."

"Let them," he said, placidly.

"But tell me": I asked, "you and I have many pleasant and grateful
memories, little pictures and stories, which seem like chapters in the
history of this doubtful idea of yours: suppose that I should write
some of them down, purely in a descriptive and narrative way, without
committing myself to any opinion as to their morality; and suppose that
a few of your opinions and prejudices, briefly expressed, were
interspersed in the form of chapters to be skipped: would a book like
that symbolize and illustrate the true inwardness of the day off? How
would it do to make such a book?"

"It would do," he answered, "provided you wanted to do it, and provided
you did not try to prove anything, or convince anybody, or convey any
profitable instruction."

"But would any one read it?" I asked. "What do you think?"

"I think," said he, stretching his arms over his head as he rose and
turned towards his den to plunge into a long evening's work, "I reckon,
and calculate, and fancy, and guess that a few people, a very few,
might browse through such a book in their days off."

A HOLIDAY IN A VACATION

It was really a good little summer resort where the boy and I were
pegging away at our vacation. There were the mountains conveniently
arranged, with pleasant trails running up all of them, carefully marked
with rustic but legible guide-posts; and there was the sea comfortably
besprinkled with islands, among which one might sail around and about,
day after day, not to go anywhere, but just to enjoy the motion and the
views; and there were cod and haddock swimming over the outer ledges in
deep water, waiting to be fed with clams at any time, and on fortunate