“Traveling is certainly one of the pleasures of life, with this peculiarity, that it affords most pleasure when the journey is over.  With all the interest and excitement attending it, there are some drawbacks.  We gratify our curiosity at times at no little cost.  In the search after strange manners, the traveler may have to adopt them; in inspecting the various conditions under which men can live, we must often subject ourselves to these conditions, and thus acquire practical experience in place of theoretical knowledge.  We cannot, like Don Cleofus, command the services of Asmodeus, to enable us to be lookers-on without becoming parties in the scenes we witness.  To know how the Arab lives, we must for a time become an Arab; and to pry into the inner mysteries of Hottentot life, you must make yourself a Hottentot.”

“And to estimate the prisoner’s woes,” L’Isle suggested, “you must try the virtues of a dungeon—­musty straw, and bread and water.”

“That would be buying the knowledge dearly,” said she; “but I would like to try how the life of a nun would suit me.”

“It would suit you the least of all women,” said Mrs. Shortridge.  “You might die in the cloister, but could not live there.”

“Oh, I am sure I could stand a short novitiate, say three or six months,” exclaimed Lady Mabel.

“Your novitiate, soon to end in freedom,” said L’Isle, “would not help you to the experience of the true internal life of the nun.  It is pleasant to walk, leading your horse by the rein, and at liberty to mount when you like; but the essence of monastic life lies in the conviction that you have turned your back forever on the world without, with all its trials, its hopes and fears, its passions and pursuits, and have given yourself religiously to tread through this life, the narrow path you have chosen, to the next.”

“You have convinced me,” said Lady Mabel.  “In my longing after a varied experience of the conditions of life, I might sacrifice half a year to the trial of one, but I prefer ignorance on this point to the burden of a life-enduring vow.”

“If our knowledge were limited by our own experience, we would know little indeed,” said L’Isle.  “Our capacity to bring home to ourselves other conditions than our own, depends more on the transferring and transforming faculties of the imagination, than on the observing powers of the eye.  If, indeed, we had never felt bodily pain, we could not feel for a man on the rack.  Had we never known anguish of mind, we might not estimate the mental agonies of others.  But we have feelings, for the exercise of which sympathy and imagination can create conditions.  We can feel with the captive in the dungeon, without going down there to take a place by his side.”

“Still, there is nothing like experience in one’s own person,” said Mrs. Shortridge.  “I can now sympathize fully with the toilworn traveler, across a parched and thirsty desert, under a broiling sun.  I own that the pleasures of this journey far exceed its pains, thanks to your care and company; but, as Lady Mabel says, the chief pleasure comes afterward, and this journey will be still more pleasant next week than now.”