A life
spent with books! He would send to Europe for all the books he desired
to read and would fill the house with them; and he would spend his days
in the house or in the shade of the trees, reading every day from
morning to night undisturbed by traffic and politics and revolutions in
the land, and by happenings all the world over.
He too was well laughed at; then the last of the three said he didn't
care for either of their ideals. He liked wine best, and if he had
great wealth he would buy the house and send to Europe - O not for books
nor for a beautiful wife! but for wine - wines of all the choicest kinds
in bottle and casks - and fill the cellars with it. And his choice wines
would bring choice spirits to help him drink them; and then in the
shade of the old trees they would have their table and sit over their
wine - the merriest, wittiest, wisest, most eloquent gathering in all
the land.
The others in their turn laughed at him, despising his ideal, and then
we set off once more.
They had not thought to put the question to me, because I was only a
boy while they were grown men; but I had listened with such intense
interest to that colloquy that when I recall the scene now I can see
the very expressions of their sun-burnt faces and listen to the very
sound of their speech and laughter.
