"Yes, I should tire even of that, after a while, glorious as it would be at first."
"Have you reached such sublime heights of philosophy already? Then, perhaps, I shall not seem to be talking nonsense, when I tell you that there is nothing in the world of which you would not tire after the first joy of possession was over, no position which would not seem monotonous. You do not believe me? Of course not. We all buy our own experience in life; on one of two rocks we split: either we do not want a thing after we have got it, or we do not get it till we no longer want it. Some of us suffer shipwreck both ways. But, Alice, you must find that out for yourself."
"Can we not profit by each other's mistakes, Uncle?"
"No, child. To what purpose should I show you the breakers where my vessel struck? Do you suppose you will steer exactly in my path? But what soberness is this? you are not among breakers yet; you are simply 'tired of living';" and Uncle John's smile was too genial to be called satirical.
"Tired of not living, I think," replied Alice,--"tired of doing nothing, of having nothing to do. The girls, Laura and the rest of them, find so much excitement in what seems to me so stupid!"
"You are not exactly like 'Laura and the rest of them,' I fancy, my dear, and what suits them is rather too tame for you. But what do you propose to do with yourself now that you are beginning to live?"
"Now you are laughing at me, Uncle, and you will laugh more when I tell you that I mean to study and to make Kate study with me."
"Poor Kate!--if you should fancy swimming, shooting, or any other unheard-of pursuit, Kate would be obliged to swim and shoot with you. But I will not laugh any more. Study, if you will, Alice; you will learn fast enough, and, in this age of fast-advancing civilization, when the chances of eligible matrimony for young ladies in your station are yearly becoming less and less,--oh, you need not put up your lip and peep into my bachelor's shaving-glass!--let me tell you that a literary taste is a recourse not to be despised. Of course you will study now to astonish me, or to surprise your young friends, or for some other equally wise reason; but the time may come when literature will be its own exceeding great reward."
"Uncle, answer me one thing,--are you as happy here in your quiet study as you were in your exciting life among the Indians? Do you not tire of this everyday sameness?"
"Close questioning, Alice, but I will answer you truly. Other things being equal, I confess to you that the Indian life was the more monotonous of the two. I look back now on my twenty years of savage life and see nothing to vary its dreary sameness; the dangers were always alike, the excitements always the same, and the rest was a dead blank. The whole twenty years might be comprised in four words,--we fought, we hunted, we eat, we slept. No, there is no monotony like that,--no life so stupid as that of the savage, with his low wants and his narrow hopes and fears. My life here among my books, which seems to you so tame, is excitement itself compared with that. Your stupidest party is full of life, intelligence, wit, when put beside an Indian powwow. There is but one charm in that wandering life, Alice,--the free intercourse with Nature; _that_ never tires; but then you must remember that to enjoy it you must be cultivated up to it. There needs all the teaching of civilization, nay, the education of life, to enjoy Nature truly. These quiet hills, these beech forests, are more to me now than Niagara was at eighteen; and Niagara itself, which raises the poet above the earth, falls tame on the mind of the savage. Believe one who knows,--the man of civilization who goes back to the savage state throws away his life; his very mind becomes, like the dyer's hand, 'subdued to what it works in.'
"But I am going out of your depth again, girls," continued he, loo
