Ah! the futility of our desires, of our castles, of our dreams! The complacency with which we jog along in what we deem to be our own particular groove! I recall a girl friend of my youth who was going to be a celibate, a great reformer, and toward that end was studying for the pulpit. She is now the mother of several children, the most peaceful and unorative woman I know. You see, humanity goes whirring over various side-tracks, thinking them to be the main line, till fate puts its peculiar but happy hand to the switch. Scharfenstein had been plugging away over rusty rails and grass-grown ties—till he came to Barscheit.
"Hope is the wings of the heart," said I, when I thought the pause had grown long enough. "You still hope?"
"In a way. If I recollect, you had an affair once,"—shrewdly.
I smoked on. I wasn't quite ready to speak.
"You were always on the hunt for ideals, too, as I remember; hope you'll find her."
"Max, my boy, I am solemnly convinced that I have."
"Good Lord, you don't mean to tell me that you are hooked?" he cried.
"I see no reason why you should use that particular tone," I answered stiffly.
"Oh, come now; tell me all about it. Who is she, and when's the wedding?"
"I don't know when the wedding's going to be, but I'm mighty sure that I have met the one girl. Max, there never was a girl like her. Witty she is, and wise; as beautiful as a summer's dawn; merry and brave; rides, drives, plays the 'cello, dances like a moon-shadow; and all that,"—with a wave of the hand.