aning wealth--while it makes indulgence in pleasures possible,
has nothing to do with happiness. Indeed the very pleasure it ensures
often obscure highest happiness--the happiness of exaltation of the
soul, of exercise of the intellect. What has money to do with happiness?
It is a happiness to wonder--it is a happiness to dream. Your over-fed,
jewel-decked, pleasure-drunk rich man or woman is too deeply embedded in
flesh and sense to do either. No"--he mused, his eyes on the glowing
coals in the grate, "No--I have no desire for wealth--for more than
enough money to keep my wife and mother comfortable. They, like myself,
have learned the lesson of being poor and happy. But I _must_ keep them
above want--I _will_ keep them above want!" As he repeated the words the
meditative mood dropped from him. He straightened himself in his chair
with sudden energy, his voice trembled and sunk almost to a whisper, in
place of the dreamy look his eyes flamed with passion.

"Mr. Graham," he exclaimed, "to see those you love better than your own
soul in want, and, in spite of working like mad, to be powerless to
raise them out of it, is hell!"

A second time the exquisite child-wife slipped quickly, noiselessly, to
his side and with the same easy grace leaned over and touched his brow
with her lips, but this time instead of moving away, remained hanging
over the back of his chair, her fair hand gently toying with the
ringlets on his brow. He was calm in an instant.

"I mean, of course, such a condition would be intolerable provided it
should ever exist," he added.

* * * * *

As the visitor stepped from the cottage door into the chill of the
bright November night, and made his way down the little path of
flagstones--irregularly shaped and clumsily laid down, so that mossy
turf which was still green, appeared between them--he felt that he was
stepping back into a flat, stale and unprofitable world from one of the
enchanted regions, "out of space, out of time," of Poe's own creation.

He had indeed, had a revelation of harmonious home-life such as he had
not guessed existed in a work-a-day world--of the music, the poetry of
living. He had had a glimpse into the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.

CHAPTER XXV.

The next morning found Mr. Graham still under the spell of the evening
with the Poes. He caught himself impatiently watching the clock, for the
man under whose charm he had come was to ca