"I really have no opinion. His mind moves in such unaccustomed channels: we find it in such unusual haunts, that nobody can tell whether it remains healthy or not. It works logically enough, granting his premises. Of course he is under delusions--we should call them mistakes merely, if they occurred in ordinary speculations; but with him, in his abnormal pursuits, they are to be expressed under the vapory forms of delusions." "Oh, it is the saddest sight to see this young man, with a nature so richly endowed, asking only for light, and the right way; to see him turning so blindly from the true given light, and searching with simple earnestness along sterile, rocky byways and thorny hedges, to find the path or opening that conducts back to a true starting place. He opens his bosom to sun and air, and bares his feet to the earth, thinking that inspiration will, through some avenue, reach his senses, and so inform him. It is the most pitiful spectacle that the eye can see," said Ida, pathetically. "Like a kind spirit sent from heaven to earth," said Bart, "who, having forgotten his message, can never find his way back; but is doomed to wander up and down the uncongenial region, searching in vain for the star-beam by which he descended." "My father has quite given him up," said Miss Giddings; "he says he passed long since the verge of healthy thought and speculation. I used to think that possibly some new and powerful stimulus, such as might spring from some new cause--" "Love, for instance," suggested Bart. "Yes, love, for instance. I declare, Mr. Ridgeley, you think as a woman." "Do women really think? I thought their minds were so clear and strong that thought was unnecessary, and they were always blest with intuitions." "Well, sir, some of them are obliged to think--when they want to be understood by men, who don't have intuitions, and can't go at all without something to hold up by--and a woman would think, perhaps, that if Sartliff could fall in love--" "And if he can't he isn't worth the saving," interjected Bart. "Exactly; and if he could, that through its medium he might be brought back to a healthy frame of mind, or a healthy walk of mind. There, Mr. Ridgeley, I have got out with that, though rather limpingly, after all." "And a forcible case you have made. Here is a man crazy about Nature; you propose as a cure for that, to make him mad about a woman. And what next?" "Well, love is human--or inhuman," said Miss Giddings; "if the former, marriage is the specific; if the latter, his lady-love might get lost in a wood, you know." "Yes, I see. Poor Sartliff had better remain where he is, winking and blinking for the lights of Nature," said Bart. "I remember," interposed Ida, "that he and your brother, among the matters they used to discuss, disagreed in their estimate of authors. Sartliff could never endure N.P. Willis, for instance."