forgot that while man resists pain he always yields to pleasure. I
forgot that he was created for difficulty, which is the oxygen that
feeds the flame of endeavor, and that difficulty alone can develop
efforts which pleasure so easily destroys.

"I am of the opinion," said the doctor, "that this institution is
founded on a perversion of human nature. This so-called hopeless love
is, as we have just had proof, one of the most disturbing elements in
life. Its victims resemble Tantalus, who, though steeped to the lips
in water, can never drink. They are the unhappy devotees of an idol,
and, like the Hindoos, stick into their sides the hooks of a cruel
passion and swing aloft in torture to the applause of an admiring
crowd."

"You evidently do not reverence hopeless love?" I remarked.

"I consider Egyplosis," he continued, "but a nervous asylum on a large
scale. This nervous temperament, with its hysterical raptures and
tears, its painful sensibility, its exalted spiritualism and
irresistible sympathy, departs so far from the steady temperate sphere
of action that can alone sustain alike the pleasures and
disappointments of life as to become the object of pity. These are the
marks of a mental disease. Ultra-romantic ideas and whimsical and
unaccountable tastes are attributes of this temperament. It is a kind
of insanity, not the insanity proceeding from hopeless mental
aberration, but founded on a systematic train of ideas born in a
heated enthusiasm. It may lead, however, to hopeless insanity."

"Doctor," said the astronomer, "you are taking a very cold-blooded
view of the subject. You seem not to have discovered that the life
here is ideal. From what you say one would think that love is a
species of insanity."

"That is precisely my idea," replied the doctor. "Haven't you observed
how foolishly people act when in love? All ordinary human prudence and
judgment are thrown aside. Love pares the claws and pulls the teeth of
man as a rational animal. Love is supreme folly."

"I think," said the astronomer, "the climate of this country has
something to do with the present institution. You see that the sun
here never sets, and, were it not for his diminutive size, would
infallibly turn the entire interior world into a desert, such as the
moon is at present, where the outer sun's heat falls for fourteen days
on the one spot without intermission, completely blasting her
territories. The mild yet incessant heat of Swang cr