have dreamed that she understood?" Mrs. Benson had been established very
comfortably in a corner with Professor Slem, who was listening with great
apparent interest to her accounts of the early life in Ohio. Irene
seemed relieved to get away into the open air, but she was in a mood that
Mr. King could not account for. Upon the veranda they encountered Miss
Lamont and the artist, whose natural enjoyment of the scene somewhat
restored her equanimity. Could there be anything more refined and
charming in the world than this landscape, this hospitable, smiling
house, with the throng of easy-mannered, pleasant-speaking guests,
leisurely flowing along in the conventional stream of social comity. One
must be a churl not to enjoy it. But Irene was not sorry when,
presently, it was time to go, though she tried to extract some comfort
from her mother's enjoyment of the occasion. It was beautiful. Mr.
Benson was in a calculating mood. He thought it needed a great deal of
money to make things run so smoothly.

Why should one inquire in such a paradise if things do run smoothly?
Cannot one enjoy a rose without pulling it up by the roots? I have no
patience with those people who are always looking on the seamy side. I
agree with the commercial traveler who says that it will only be in the
millennium that all goods will be alike on both sides. Mr. King made the
acquaintance in Newport of the great but somewhat philosophical Mr.
Snodgrass, who is writing a work on "The Discomforts of the Rich," taking
a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He declares that
their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies, jealousies,
disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the dictionary of
disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those of the poor, and
that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles are real and
unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these are set
forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration that