[Illustration:  “What would you have me be—­a millionaire?”]

“Ambitious,” I asked, “for what?”

“Why, to rise in the world; to get ahead.”

“I know you’ll pardon me,” I said, “for appearing to cross-examine you, but I’m tremendously interested in these things.  What do you mean by rising?  And who am I to get ahead of?”

He looked at me in astonishment, and with evident impatience at my consummate stupidity.

“I am serious,” I said.  “I really want to make the best I can of my life.  It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“See here,” he said:  “let us say you clear up five hundred a year from this farm——­”

“You exaggerate—­” I interrupted.

“Do I?” he laughed; “that makes my case all the better.  Now, isn’t it possible to rise from that?  Couldn’t you make a thousand or five thousand or even fifty thousand a year?”

It seems an unanswerable argument:  fifty thousand dollars!

“I suppose I might,” I said, “but do you think I’d be any better off or happier with fifty thousand a year than I am now?  You see, I like all these surroundings better than any other place I ever knew.  That old green hill over there with the oak on it is an intimate friend of mine.  I have a good cornfield in which every year I work miracles.  I’ve a cow and a horse, and a few pigs.  I have a comfortable home.  My appetite is perfect, and I have plenty of food to gratify it.  I sleep every night like a boy, for I haven’t a trouble in this world to disturb me.  I enjoy the mornings here in the country:  and the evenings are pleasant.  Some of my neighbours have come to be my good friends.  I like them and I am pretty sure they like me.  Inside the house there I have the best books ever written and I have time in the evenings to read them—­I mean really read them.  Now the question is, would I be any better off, or any happier, if I had fifty thousand a year?”

John Starkweather laughed.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I see I’ve made the acquaintance of a philosopher.”

“Let us say,” I continued, “that you are willing to invest twenty years of your life in a million dollars.” ("Merely an illustration,” said John Starkweather.) “You have it where you can put it in the bank and take it out again, or you can give it form in houses, yachts, and other things.  Now twenty years of my life—­to me—­is worth more than a million dollars.  I simply can’t afford to sell it for that.  I prefer to invest it, as somebody or other has said, unearned in life.  I’ve always had a liking for intangible properties.”

“See here,” said John Starkweather, “you are taking a narrow view of life.  You are making your own pleasure the only standard.  Shouldn’t a man make the most of the talents given him?  Hasn’t he a duty to society?”

“Now you are shifting your ground,” I said, “from the question of personal satisfaction to that of duty.  That concerns me, too.  Let me ask you:  Isn’t it important to society that this piece of earth be plowed and cultivated?”