her--and she knows it!

To gain money was exhausting; to spend it is precisely as exhausting.
He cannot quit the appointed path nor lift the doom. Dinner is
finished ere he has begun to recover from the varied shock of home.
Then his daughter may negligently throw him a few moments of charming
cajolery. He may gossip in simple idleness with his wife. He may
gambol like any infant with the dog. A yawn. The shadow of the next
day is upon him. He must not stay up too late, lest the vigour
demanded by the next day should be impaired. Besides, he does not want
to stay up. Naught is quite interesting enough to keep him up. And
bed, too, is part of the appointed, unescapable path. To bed he goes,
carrying ten million preoccupations. And of his state of mind the
kindest that can be said is that he is philosophic enough to hope for
the best.

And after the night he wakes up, slowly or quickly according to his
temperament, and greets the day with:

"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"



II


The interesting point about the whole situation is that the plain man
seldom or never asks himself a really fundamental question about that
appointed path of his--that path from which he dare not and could not
wander.