r weeks
and months in strange wild places, camping out among strange beasts
and birds, lost in pathless forests, or wandering over silent plains.
Then, suddenly, back in the crowd, to feel the press of business, to
make or lose millions in a week, to adventure, compete, and win; but
always, at the moment when this might pall, with a haven of rest
in view, an ancient English mansion, stately, formal, and august,
islanded, over its sunken fence, by acres of buttercups. There to
study, perhaps to write, perhaps to experiment, dreaming in my garden
at night of new discoveries, to revolutionize science and bring the
world of commerce to my feet. Then, before I have time to tire, to be
off on my travels again, washing gold in Klondike, trading for furs
in Siberia, fighting in Madagascar, in Cuba, or in Crete, or smoking
hasheesh in tents with Persian mystics. To make my end action itself,
not anything action may gain, choosing not to pursue the Good for fear
I should let slip Goods, but, in my pursuit of Goods, attaining the
only Good I can conceive--a full and harmonious exercise of all my
faculties and powers."

On hearing him speak thus I felt, I confess, such a warmth of sympathy
that I hesitated to attempt an answer. But Leslie, who was young
enough still to live mainly in ideas, broke in with his usual zeal and
passion.

"But," he said, "all this activity of which you speak is no more
good than it is bad; every phase of it, by your own confession, is so
imperfect in itself that it requires to be constantly exchanged for
some other, equally defective."

"Not at all," answered Ellis, "each phase is good in its time and
place; but each becomes bad if it is pursued exclusively to the
detriment of others."

"But is each good in itself? or, at least, is it more good than bad?
You choose, in imagination, to dwell upon the good aspect of each; but
in practice you would have to experience also the bad. Your hunting
in trackless forests will involve exposure, fatigue, and hunger; your
fighting in Madagascar, fever, wounds, and disillusionment; and so
through all your chapter of accidents--for accidents they are at best,
and never the substance of Good; rather, indeed, a substance of Evil,
dogged by a shadow of Good."

"Oh!" cried Ellis, "what a horrid prosaic view--from an idealist, too!
Why, the Bad is all part of the Good; one takes the rough with the
smooth. Or rather the Good stands above what you call good and bad; it