BIGELOW--A romanticist--and he still is!

MARTHA--[Pointing at CURTIS with gay mischief.] What! That sedate
man! Never!

CURTIS--[Looking up and smiling at them both affectionately--
lazily.] Don't mind him, Martha. He always was crazy.

BIGELOW--[To CURT--accusingly.] Why did you elect to take up
mining engineering at Cornell instead of a classical degree at the
Yale of your fathers and brothers? Because you had been reading
Bret Harte in prep. school and mistaken him for a modern realist.
You devoted four years to grooming yourself for another outcast of
Poker Flat. [MARTHA laughs.]

CURTIS--[Grinning.] It was you who were hypnotized by Harte--so
much so that his West of the past is still your blinded New
England-movie idea of the West at present. But go on. What next?

BIGELOW--Next? You get a job as engineer in that Goldfield mine--
but you are soon disillusioned by a laborious life where six-
shooters are as rare as nuggets. You try prospecting. You find
nothing but different varieties of pebbles. But it is necessary to
your nature to project romance into these stones, so you go in
strong for geology. As a geologist, you become a slave to the
Romance of the Rocks. It is but a step from that to anthropology--
the last romance of all. There you find yourself--because there is
no further to go. You win fame as the most proficient of young
skull-hunters--and wander over the face of the globe, digging up
bones like an old dog.