looked inquiringly at Eric, and then made him the direct offer
of a considerable salary, and an increasing share of the profits.

Eric declined, courteously and gratefully, as he had not entirely
decided whether he would engage at all in any new pursuit. The doctor
entered warmly into the matter, and extolled the superiority of our
age, in which men of ripe scientific attainments devoted themselves to
active employments, and, through their independent property; created a
commonalty such as no period of history had ever before known.

"'This is ours, this is ours,' we commoners can say. Don't you think
so?"

"Most certainly."

"Now then, go thou and do likewise."

And he added to this, how glad the Weidmann family would be to receive
him into their circle.

Eric smilingly replied, that he felt obliged to decline this very
friendly offer; that he valued very highly the independence which
property gives, but was not adapted to a life of acquisition.

"Indeed?" cried the doctor, and there was something of contempt in his
tone. "Do you know how the question of our age is put? It is, To use,
or to be used? Why are you willing to be used by this Herr Sonnenkamp?"

"You surely would not want me to use other people, and appropriate to
myself the product of their labor?"

"It is not well," interposed Weidmann, "to generalize in this way upon
a wholly personal question. I see--I expected that the utter separation
of the rich and the poor would vitally interest you; but here we have
our doctor, and he will agree with me, that it is with the so-called
social maladies as with those of the body. We know to-day, better than
any period has ever known, the scientific diagnosis of disease, but we
are ignorant of the specific remedy, and a disease must be known a long
time, and known very thoroughly, before its method of cure is
discovered; yet we must put up with it, in the meantime, and let it
pass."

"Have you had no craving to be rich?" the doctor cried, apparently
excited.

"It would be unwise to have a craving for what I cannot obtain through
my own capabilities."

Weidmann's eye was quietly fixed upon Eric's countenance; the latter
was aware of it, and whilst he thought, at this moment, that he could
with a motion of his hand quietly relinquish all the offered riches of
the world, the temptation came over his soul. What it would be for one
to be free from all the cares of life, and to be able to devote himself
to li