“But one has to have it, Joshua! Have you no ambition?”
“Does he? Not much, I’m thinking. Ambition, eh? So you, too, consider ambition in terms of money. My ambition is to add something worth while to the knowledge of the race. If I’m paid for it, well and good. And if I’m not I’ll manage to struggle along. How ’bout it, Mrs. Mundy? You’ll back me up. Do you consider that a fellow can have no ambition merely because he doesn’t hanker for wealth?”
“By no means,” she replied quickly. “And Madge doesn’t either. Just the same, Joshua, matters are different with you. You are a man and have a goal to work for. We are only two women, with nothing to work for but a living. What else can we hope to get from the homestead, provided the land is productive, a market develops, and we are able to carry on the work? For my part, of course, I would almost be content to live a simple life in these mountains, away from the strife and hurry of the world, with plenty of books and magazines and music, and with now and then a trip out to some city to feed up on everything that civilization has to offer. That would make for the keenest appreciation of what men call the good things in life. What city people see every day palls on them, and they become fretful, blasé, unappreciative. But to me, fairly reveling in it two or three times a year, it would bring a wonderful satisfaction. I guess you feel the same way about it, Joshua. But whether Madge does or not is a question.”
“Don’t worry about me, Ma,” Madge put in. “I’ll try anything once.”
“But we don’t want you to feel that way about it, Madge,” Joshua told her.
“But I do feel that way about it,” she retorted shortly, “so let’s forget it.”
Joshua slumped down in his chair, and copied Madge by extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. Then he tamped the burning tobacco in his briar pipe and gave his soul to dreams.
“For me,” he said, “what I consider an ideal life is just opening. I love the freedom of these majestic mountains, the grandeur of the clean, cool forests, the fascinating colors of the lake. Up here a person can be himself and will be able to rise above the petty squabbles, struggles, ambitions, hatreds, and copycatism of life in the congested districts. I’m more or less a caveman, I guess, so far as my physical well-being is concerned. Listen to this:
“‘“And I, too, sing the song of all creation,—
A brave sky and a glad wind blowing by,