"Well," he said, "there are one or two good and sufficient reasons, to
which you, of course, may not agree. First, though, I'll venture to
assert that your idea of the nature and purpose of life as we humans
know and experience it is rather hazy. Have you ever seriously asked
yourself why we exist as entities at all? And, seeing that we do find
ourselves possessed of this existence, what constrains us to act along
certain lines?"

Hazel shook her head. That was an abstraction which she had never
considered. She had been too busy living to make a critical analysis
of life. She had the average girl's conception of life, when she
thought of it at all, as a state of being born, of growing up, of
marrying, of trying to be happy, and ultimately--very remotely--of
dying. And she had also the conventional idea that activity in the
world, the world as she knew it, the doing of big things in a public or
semi-public way, was the proper sphere for people of exceptional
ability. But why this should be so, what law, natural or fabricated by
man, made it so she had never asked herself. She had found it so, and
taken it for granted. Roaring Bill Wagstaff was the first man to cross
her path who viewed the struggle for wealth and fame and power as other
than inevitable and desirable.

"You see, little person," he went on, "we have some very definite
requirements which come of the will to live that dominates all life.
We must eat, we must protect our bodies against the elements, and we
need for comfort some sort of shelter. But in securing these
essentials to self-preservation where is the difference, except in
method, between the banker who manipulates millions and the post-hole
digger on the farm? Not a darned bit, in reality. They're both after
exactly the same thing--security against want. If the post-hole
digger's wants are satisfied by two dollars a day he is getting the
same result as the banker, whose standard of living crowds his big
income. Having secured the essentials, then, what is the next urge of
life? Happiness. That, however, brings us to a more abstract question.

"In the main, though, that's my answer to your question. Here I can
secure myself a good living--as a matter of fact, I can easily get the
wherewithal to purchase any luxuries that I desire--and it is gotten
without a petty-larceny struggle with my fellow men. Here I exploit
only natural resources, take only what the earth has prodigall