“Every thing needful for bodily comfort has been furnished,” said her husband; “but it has been a daily regret to me that we could not supply you with the independent enjoyment of books. If we could, you would have been spared many a tedious hour when I was obliged to be away from you.” “I have certainty felt enough of this,” said his wife, “to be more than ever sensible that, though it is a most desirable thing that the external comforts of life should be provided for every body, these comforts are after all only means to a higher end. When we have all that can be obtained in that way, we remain unsatisfied unless there be pursuits to occupy the mind.” “It is as a pursuit occupying the mind,” observed her husband, “that productive industry is chiefly valuable. It has another object,—to place us in a condition fit for a further and better pursuit: and if we stop short when we have secured the requisite leisure and comfort, we stop short of what we were made for.” “I am rather afraid of our people mistaking the means for the end,” said Mrs. Stone. “They know that they are doing their duty—that they are employed to the best possible purpose at present, in providing for the support and comfort of themselves and their families; and the pursuit itself keeps their minds active, and therefore makes them happy. But I am afraid of their going on to make this their only object, when they ought to be reaching forward to something better. In a few months we shall have stores of whatever we want; and it would be a pity to forget all we have learned from books and seen in the world, for the sake of heaping up more food and clothing than we can possibly use.” “You need not fear, madam,” said the captain. “Our people are already thinking of trading with the next settlement, and even with Cape Town. I should not wonder if in five years we have a flourishing commerce, exchanging our productions for the manufactures of England. If we should go on working till we have a regular town of brick or stone houses, and roads and bridges, and periodical conveyances to and from Cape Town, with all the new objects which would be introduced by these means, you would no longer fear our people’s not having a sufficient variety of pursuits, would you?” “Certainly not,” said Mrs. Stone, “because I know what is the natural course of things where such improvements take place. We shall by that time have a chapel and a school-house, and a library; and, however the business of the society may be extended and varied, its members will become more and more disposed to find leisure for the improvement of their minds.”