"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."