is something grander than plodding along and saving a
little money."

"No doubt you would be glad enough to have the money, when you have gone
off like the prodigal son, and wasted health and substance in foreign
lands," said grandmother with some asperity.

Jack had been brought up to reverence the Bible and religion, and to
respect his grandmother was the first article in his creed. He relapsed
into silence, but the busy brain kept up a vigorous ferment. What was
life all about, anyhow? Why did people come into the world, live thirty,
sixty, or even eighty years, and then drop out of it. Was it merely to
eat, drink, and sleep?

The wider lore at the academy had a peculiar effect upon Jack, tangled
his brain, begat confusing mental processes. Greek he hated; Latin he
barely endured; chemistry and mineralogy interested him, and in
mathematics he excelled. Fred carried every thing before him, graduated
with honors, and was to enter Harvard. The Lawrences went to Newport,
and Jack missed his bosom friend sorely. He rambled through the woods,
read every thing that came in his way, and thought a good deal in his
crude, undisciplined fashion.

What was he to do with this tough problem of unknown quantities?

He ventured at last to broach the subject to his father.

Bernard Darcy studied his son gravely. Now, it must be considered that
he had never been troubled with this hungry, perplexing view of life
that urges one on to dip deep into the secrets of existence. To have a
pretty house and garden, to watch his flowers, vegetables, and chickens
grow, to dream over his books in his cosey sitting-room, not to be
pinched for money, not to be anxious about employment, but to go on
serenely day after day,--this was Mr. Darcy's idea of happiness; and,
having this, he was perfectly content.

His mother secretly chafed at his lack of ambition; his neighbors said,
"A good, honest fellow, but with no 'push' in him." Curiously enough,
the virtues that are preached from pulpits Sunday after Sunday, that we
are always recommending to our friends, are _not_ the ones that gain any
vast amount of credit in this life. "Be content! be content!" cries
every one, from revelation downward; yet content, pure and simple, is
rather despised and flouted by our fellow-men.

"I don't know, Jack," said the elder, gravely shaking his head with slow
dubiousness. "What would you do if you were once away?"

"I'd go on until I found some place into