pleasure and peace can only
be found in the verities of nature; her beauties and realities are the
only satisfying and enduring things.

"What can you who pass your days amid the noise and dirt of cities,
breathing their tainted atmosphere, and your intellects nourished upon
artificialities and the creations of men's minds, know of nature? How
many of you have ever gazed long enough at the stars to appreciate their
beauty and mystery, or listened to the sound of the wind and tried to
guess its meaning?"

"Bah! you are as sentimental as a school-girl!" ejaculated the Colonel.
"You talk like one who has just taken a short course in Thoreau or
Rousseau."

The Captain only laughed in return. He rose from his seat and began
striding up and down before them with his hands clasped behind his back
and his gaze fixed on the ground.

"Who are you," he continued passionately, stopping abruptly before them,
"to assume that others should live according to your lackadaisical,
sensuous sentimentality--your divan, boudoir conceptions of life?
Thoreau and Rousseau and Emerson and Ruskin were great men, but had they
talked less and actually lived out the life they preached, the world
might possibly have been aroused to a consciousness of something higher
by this time; but they were too small for the task. It requires a man
cast in a bigger mold to perform the work--it is only in men like me
that the future hope of the race lies. I must _live_ the life they
preached. Do you understand? Why, I could crush you and the world you
represent in the hollow of my hand! You seek happiness in the evanescent
wine and laughter of the illusive, superficial life. I, too, sought it
there, but like you, I did not find it."

His words sank deep into the soul of Blanch. She admired his strength
and yet hated him for it. Why, she asked herself again, as she did on
the day he first imparted his new views of life to her, was she not
moved? Why was she still unable to thrill at the sound of his words?

She could not understand it. There seemed to be something lacking either
in him or in her.

"What assurance have you," she asked, "that you will find happiness in
this new life which you propose to lead?"

"The consciousness which tells me I exist, voices the fulfillment of
that promise. There can be no doubt of it. The traditions that have come
down to us from the past from all nations that once men were free, is no
myth. The true poetry of life, I re