Peace, ease, relaxation in a home vibrating to the
whir of such astounding phenomena? Impossible dream! These phenomena
were originally meant by him to be the ornamentation of his career,
but they are threatening to be the sole reason of his career. If his
wife lives for him, it is certain that he lives just as much for his
wife; and as for his daughter, while she emphatically does not live
for him, he is bound to admit that he has just got to live for
her--and she knows it!

To gain money was exhausting; to spend it is precisely as exhausting.
He cannot quit the appointed path nor lift the doom. Dinner is
finished ere he has begun to recover from the varied shock of home.
Then his daughter may negligently throw him a few moments of charming
cajolery. He may gossip in simple idleness with his wife. He may
gambol like any infant with the dog. A yawn. The shadow of the next
day is upon him. He must not stay up too late, lest the vigour
demanded by the next day should be impaired. Besides, he does not want
to stay up. Naught is quite interesting enough to keep him up. And
bed, too, is part of the appointed, unescapable path. To bed he goes,
carrying ten million preoccupations. And of his state of mind the
kindest that can be said is that he is philosophic enough to hope for
the best.

And after the night he wakes up, slowly or quickly according to his
temperament, and greets the day with:

"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"

II

The interesting point about the whole situation is that the plain man
seldom or never asks himself a really fundamental question about that
appointed path of his--that path from which he dare not and could not
wander.

Once, perhaps in a parable, the plain man travelling met another
traveller. And the plain man demanded of the traveller:

"Where are you going to?"

The traveller replied:

"Now I come to think of it, I don't know."

The plain man was ruffled by this insensate answer. He said:

"But you are travelling?"

The traveller replied:

"Yes."

The plain man, beginning to be annoyed, said:

"Have you never asked yourself where you are going to?"

"I have not."

"But do you mean to tell me," protested the plain man, now irritated,
"that you are putting yourself to all this trouble, peril, and expense
of trains and steamers, without having asked yourself where you are
going to?"

"It never occurred to me," the traveller admitted. "I just had to
start and I