ng of these fine young chaps, the Boy Scouts I
saw there, who are trying to study God's big out-of-doors and must
content themselves with stingy little parks. It's the love of Nature
that takes them to the parks, and compared with this they have a poor
substitute. This is the world as God made it, with all its primordial
beauty. We're fortunate that circumstances placed us here, Thomas, and
we should be for ever thankful."

"I'm wonderin' now," observed Thomas, as he and Doctor Joe paced up
and down the gravelly beach, "why folks ever lives in such places as
you tells about. There's plenty o' room down here on The Labrador, and
plenty o' other places, I'm not doubtin', where they'd be free from
the crowds and dirt, and have plenty o' room to stretch, and live fine
like we lives."

"We're a thousand miles from a railway," said Doctor Joe. "Most of the
people in the cities wouldn't live a thousand paces from a railway if
they could help themselves. They take a car and ride if they've only
half a mile to go. They ride so much they've almost forgotten how to
walk. They like crowds. They'd be lonesome if they were away from
them."

"'Tis strange, wonderful strange, how some folks lives," remarked
Thomas, quite astonished that any could prefer the city to his own
big, free Labrador. "When folks has enough to keep un busy they never
gets lonesome, and bein' idle is like wastin' a part of life. A man
could never be lonesome where there's plenty o' water and woods about.
I always finds jobs a-plenty to turn my hand to, and I has no time to
feel lonesome. And I never could live where I didn't have room enough
to stretch, _what_ever."

"That's it!" Doctor Joe spoke decisively. "Room enough to stretch mind
as well as body. Why, Thomas, I've often heard men say that they had
to 'kill time', and didn't know what to do with themselves for hours
together!"

"'Tis wicked and against the Lord's will," and Thomas shook his head.
"The Lord never wants folks to be idle or kill time. He fixes it so
there's a-plenty of useful things for everybody to do all the time,
and they wants to do un."

"'Tis the measure of a man's worth," remarked Doctor Joe. "The
worth-while man never has an hour to kill. The day hasn't hours
enough for him. It's the other kind that kill time--the sort that are
not, and never will be, of much account in the world."

They walked a little in silence, each busy with his own thoughts, when
Thomas remarked:

"T