hardly worth while, but since
we are here we may as well feed from the choicest fruits, and try for
the first prizes."

Now, his wife was one of those happy, contented, sweet,
make-the-best-of-it-cheerily persons who never complained even under the
most trying circumstances. It is much to the detriment of society that
the variety is not more numerous, but we are not here to criticise the
laws that govern the human nature of the ladies. This lady was as far
remote from her husband in temperament as Venus is from Neptune. He was
darkness, she was daylight; and the patience with which she tolerated
him in his dark moods was beautiful though tragic. It was plain that she
loved him, for what else in a woman could overlook such darkness in a
man?

"You see," he would say, "it is like this. Here I am slaving away for
about seventy-five dollars per month, year in and year out. All I get is
my food and clothing--and yours, of course, which is as much necessary,
but is more or less of a white man's burden. No sooner do I get a dollar
in my hand than it has to be passed along to the butcher, baker, grocer,
dressmaker, milliner. Are our efforts worth while when we have no
immediate prospects of improvement? And then the monotony of the game:
eat, sleep, work; eat, sleep, work. And the environs are as monotonous
as the occupations. I think man was made for something more, although a
very small percentage are ever so fortunate as to get it. Now, I can
make a mere living by roaming about from place to place as well as I can
by sitting down glued to this spot that I hate, and then I will have
the chance of falling into something that is a great deal better, and
have an opportunity to see something, hear something, learn something.
Here I am dying by inches, unwept, unhonoured and unsung."

To be "blue" was his normal condition. His sky was always cloudy, and
with this was mingled a disposition of weariness which turned him with
disgust from all familiar objects. With him "familiarity bred contempt."
One day when his psychological temperament was somewhat below normal the
pent up thunder in him exploded and the lightning was terrible:

"Here I am rooted to one spot," he said, "fossilized, stagnant, wasting
away, dead to the whole world except this one little acre. And what is
there here? Streets, buildings, trees, fences, hills, water. Nothing out
of the ordinary; and so familiar, they have become hateful. Why,
everything in the env