things nearer home.

"In the backwoods of Canada."

"The backwoods of Canada!"

"I assure you it is a very enjoyable region."

"What _could_ you find to do there?"

"More than enough. I spent my time between hunting--fishing--and
studying."

"Studying what, pray? Not backwoods farming, I suppose?"

"Well, no, not exactly. Backwoods farming is not precisely in my line."

"What is in your line that you could study there?"

"It is not a bad place to study anything;--if you except, perhaps, art
and antiquity."

"I did not know you studied anything _but_ art."

"It is hardly a sufficient object to fill a man's life worthily; do you
think so?"

"What would fill it worthily?" the lady asked, with a kind of dreary
abstractedness. And if Philip had surprised her a moment before, he was
surprised in his turn. As he did not answer immediately, Mrs. Wishart
went on.

"A man's life, or a woman's life? What would fill it worthily? Do you
know? Sometimes it seems to me that we are all living for nothing."

"I am ready to confess that has been the case with me,--to my shame be
it said."

"I mean, that there is nothing really worth living for."

"_That_ cannot be true, however."

"Well, I suppose I say so at the times when I am unable to enjoy
anything in my life. And yet, if you stop to think, what _does_
anybody's life amount to? Nobody's missed, after he is gone; or only
for a minute; and for himself--There is not a year of _my_ life that I
can remember, that I would be willing to live over again."

"Apparently, then, to enjoy is not the chief end of existence. I mean,
of this existence."

"What do we know of any other? And if we do not enjoy ourselves, pray
what in the world should we live for?"

"I have seen people that I thought enjoyed themselves," Philip said
slowly.

"Have you? Who were they? I do not know them."

"You know some of them. Do you recollect a friend of mine, for whom you
negotiated lodgings at a far-off country village?"

"Yes, I remember. They took her, didn't they?"

"They took her. And I had the pleasure once or twice of visiting her
there."

"Did she like it?"

"Very much. She could not help liking it. And I thought those people
seemed to enjoy life. Not relatively, but positively."

"The Lothrops!" cried Mrs. Wishart. "I can not conceive it. Why, they
are very poor."

"That made no hindrance, in their case."

"Poor people, I am afraid they have not been enjoying themse