“Well Belle, you may be right, but I think I would have risked it.  I don’t think because Mr. Romaine drinks occasionally that I would have given him up.  Oh young men will sow their wild oats.”

“And as we sow, so must we reap, and as to saying about young men sowing their wild oats, I think it is full of pernicious license.  A young man has no more right to sow his wild oats than a young woman.  God never made one code of ethics for a man and another for a woman.  And it is the duty of all true women to demand of men the same standard of morality that they do of woman.”

“Ah Belle that is very fine in theory, but you would find it rather difficult, if you tried to reduce your theory to practice.”

“All that may be true, but the difficulty of a duty is not a valid excuse for its non performance.”

“My dear cousin it is not my role to be a reformer.  I take things as I find them and drift along the tide of circumstances.”

“And is that your highest ideal of life?  Why Jeanette such a life is not worth living.”

“Whether it is or not, I am living it and I rather enjoy it.  Your vexing problems of life never disturb me.  I do not think I am called to turn this great world ‘right side up with care,’ and so I float along singing as I go,

  “I’d be a butterfly born in a bower
  Kissing every rose that is pleasant and sweet,
  I’d never languish for wealth or for power
  I’d never sigh to have slaves at my feet.”

“Such a life would never suit me, life must mean to me more than ease, luxury and indulgence, it must mean aspiration and consecration, endeavor and achievement.”

“Well, Belle, should we live twenty years longer, I would like to meet you and see by comparing notes which of us shall have gathered the most sunshine or shadow from life.”

“Yes Jeanette we will meet in less than twenty years, but before then your glad light eyes will be dim with tears, and the easy path you have striven to walk will be thickly strewn with thorn; and whether you deserve it or not, life will have for you a mournful earnestness, but notwithstanding all your frivolity and flippancy there is fine gold in your character, which the fire of affliction only will reveal.”

Chapter III

[Text missing.]

Chapter IV

“How is business?”

“Very dull, I am losing terribly.”

“Any prospect of times brightening?”

“I don’t see my way out clear; but I hope there will be a change for the better.  Confidence has been greatly shaken, men of[?] business have grown exceedingly timid about investing and there is a general depression in every department of trade and business.”