“I wish I could help you, Cornelia.  It must be terrible, indeed, to stand on the brink of the grave and have no belief in anything.  I would give more than I possess to be able to assist you, but I cannot; I have no truth to offer you; I have yet discovered nothing for myself.  I am not so sanguine as I was a year ago, but I still hope that I shall succeed.”

“You will not; you will not.  It is all mocking mystery, and no more than the aggregated generations of the past can you find any solution.”

Cornelia shook her head, and leaned back in her chair.

“Philosophy promises one,” replied Beulah resolutely.

“Philosophy!  Take care!  That hidden rock stranded me.  Listen to me.  Philosophy, or, what is nowadays its synonym, metaphysical systems, are worse than useless.  They will make you doubt your own individual existence, if that be possible.  I am older than you; I am a sample of the efficacy of such systems.  Oh, the so-called philosophers of this century and the last are crowned heads of humbuggery!  Adepts in the famous art of”

                              “’Wrapping nonsense round,
     With pomp and darkness, till it seems profound.’”

“They mock earnest, enquiring minds with their refined, infinitesimal, homeopathic ‘developments’ of deity; metaphysical wolves in Socratic cloaks.  Oh, they have much to answer for!  ’Spring of philosophy!’ ha! ha!  They have made a frog pond of it, in which to launch their flimsy, painted toy barks.  Have done with them, Beulah, or you will be miserably duped.”

“Have you lost faith in Emerson and Theodore Parker?” asked Beulah.

“Yes; lost faith in everything and everybody, except Mrs. Asbury.  Emerson’s atheistic fatalism is enough to unhinge human reason; he is a great and, I believe, an honest thinker, and of his genius I have the profoundest admiration.  An intellectual Titan, he wages a desperate war with received creeds, and, rising on the ruins of systems, struggles to scale the battlements of truth.  As for Parker, a careful perusal of his works was enough to disgust me.  But no more of this, Beulah—­so long as you have found nothing to rest upon.  I had hoped much from your earnest search; but since it has been futile, let the subject drop.  Give me that glass of medicine.  Dr. Hartwell was here just before you came.  He is morose and haggard; what ails him?”

“I really don’t know.  I have not seen him for several months—­not since August, I believe.”

“So I supposed, as I questioned him about you; and he seemed ignorant of your movements.  Beulah, does not life look dreary and tedious when you anticipate years of labor and care?  Teaching is not child’s sport.  Are you not already weary in spirit?”

“No, I am not weary; neither does life seem joyless.  I know that I shall have to labor for a support; but necessity always supplies strength.  I have many, very many sources of happiness, and look forward, hopefully, to a life of usefulness.”