"Eureka!" murmured Cornelia, eying her companion curiously, "Eureka!
you shall have the tallest case in the British Museum, or Barnum's,
just as your national antipathies may incline you."
"What impresses you as so singular in my mode of life?" asked Beulah
rather dryly.
"Your philosophic contentment, which I believe you are too candid to
counterfeit. Your easy solution of that great human riddle given the
world, to find happiness. The Athenian and Alexandrian schools
dwindle into nothingness. Commend me to your 'categories,' O Queen
of Philosophy." She withdrew her searching eyes, and fixed them
moodily on the fire, twirling the tassel of her robe as she mused.
"You are most egregiously mistaken, Cornelia, if you have been led
to suppose, from what I said a moment since, that I am never
troubled about anything. I merely referred to enjoyments derived
from various sources, open alike to rich and poor. There are Marahs
hidden in every path; no matter whether the draught is taken in
jeweled goblets or unpolished gourds."
"Sometimes, then, you are 'blued' most dismally, like the balance of
unphilosophic men and women, eh?"
"Occasionally my mind is very much perplexed and disturbed; not
exactly 'blued,' as you express it, but dimmed, clouded."
"What clouds it? Will you tell me?" said Cornelia eagerly.
"The struggle to see that which I suppose it never was intended I
should see."
"I don't understand you," said Cornelia, knitting her brows.
"Nor would you even were I to particularize."
"Perhaps I am not so very obtuse as you fancy."
"At any rate, I shall not enter into detail," answered Beulah,
smiling quietly at the effect of her words.
"Do you ever weary of your books?" Cornelia leaned forward, and bent
a long searching look on her guest's countenance as she spoke.
"Not of my books; but sometimes, nay, frequently, of the thoughts
they excite."
"A distinction without a difference," said the invalid coldly.
"A true distinction, nevertheless," maintained Beulah.
"Be good enough to explain it then."
"For instance, I read Carlyle for hours, without the slightest
sensation of weariness. Midnight forces me to lay the book
reluctantly aside, and then the myriad conjectures and inquiries
which I am conscious of, as arising from those same pages, weary me
beyond all degrees of endurance."
"And these conjectures cloud your mind?" said Cornelia, with a half-
smile breaking over her face.
"I did not say so; I merely gave it as an illustration of what you
professed not to understand."