To do this,
without becoming an active worker and director, would neither be
wise nor like your husband, who is not a man to trust himself on the
ocean of business without studying well the charts, and, at times,
taking fast hold upon the rudder."
"You might have been so happy here, Edward," said Mrs. Markland,
looking into his face and smiling feebly.
"A happy idler? Impossible!"
"You have been no idler, my husband, since our retirement from the
city. Look around, and say whose intelligence, whose taste, are
visible wherever the eye falls?"
"A poor, vain life, for a man of thought and energy, has been mine,
Agnes, during the last few years. The world has claims on me beyond
that of mere landscape-gardening! In a cultivation of the beautiful
alone no man of vigorous mind can or ought to rest satisfied. There
is a goal beyond, and it is already dimly revealed, in the far
distance, to my straining vision."
"I greatly fear, Edward," replied his wife, speaking in her gentle,
yet impressive way, "that when the goal you now appear so eager to
reach, is gained, you will see still another beyond.
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