! my dear boy!" said Mr. Floyd. "When your accident came I
forgot my own wishes at once, thinking only of your need of your mother.
I would have given up more for you than that: I would have given up my
life. Come, come! we have fallen into too serious a vein. Let us talk
about our trip to Europe and the East. I never had the right sort of a
travelling-companion yet: wise men stay at home, but bores and noodles
go abroad."

"But when we start the wise men will no longer be at home."

"You have hit it precisely. There are a few things I want to show
you--some cathedrals, landscapes and pictures. I will save you a world
of trouble, and will instruct you at once to find certain objects
frightful and unworthy of notice or esteem. The zest of travel is taken
out of one by the necessity of muttering vague formulas of meaningless
praise before pictures and statues it is traditional to admire. There's
too much of everything in this world. When a man has reached my age and
my state of health he feels the necessity of getting at the real
substance of things."

"But can one get at it?"

"Oh, don't utter any precocious wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the
substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about
the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible
enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to
knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man
not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put
aside his spirit of philosophical inquiry, and do something useful for
himself and his fellow-men. For my own part, I don't think Hamlet a fine
fellow. Don't ask conundrums. Your duty now is to finish your collegiate
course respectably. Take honors or not as it happens, but be a man, and
win yourself the place you ought to take, and keep it like a gentleman.
Then we will travel, and I will remember you are young and let you do
the foolish things youth loves to do. We will have famous times
together. Not that I altogether approve of vagabondizing. Still, what is
there for us to do? I am worn out: you are too young to have duties to
society, and ought to try life, and examine, criticise and become
enlightened. I suppose I shall catch the mania for bric-a-brac and
curiosities, and make them the object of my life, since I have no other.
If I do, I shall be obliged to will them to you, Floyd, for, Goodness
knows, Helen will have enough to