"Oh, there's always plenty to do, if you'll only do it. I've been cultivating some virtuosities, among other things. Remind me to show you my etchings when we go in. Did you notice, perhaps, that little head over the table, on the north wall? No? Then I smatter botany some. I'll let you look over my _hortus siccus_ before you go. It has some very rare ferns; one of them is a new species, and Fungus--who exchanges with me--swore that he was going to have it named after me. I sent the first specimen to have it described in his forthcoming report. But doubtless all this sort of thing is a bore to you. Well, lately I have been going into genealogy, and I find it more and more absorbing. Those piles of blank-books and manuscripts on the floor at the south end are all crammed with genealogical notes and material." "I should think you would find it pretty dry fodder," I said. "That is because you take an outside, unsympathetic view of it. Now, to an amateur it's anything but dry. There is as much excitement in hunting down a missing link in a pedigree that you have been on the trail of for a long time, as there is in the chase of any other kind of game." "Do you ever get across the water? Travel, if I remember right, played a large part in your scheme of life once." "Yes; I've been over once, for a few months. But my income, though very comfortable for the statics of existence, is rather short for the dynamics, and so I mostly stay at home." "Did you meet any interesting people over there? Any of the crowned heads, famous wits, etc., whom you once proposed to cultivate?" "No; nobody in particular. I went in a very quiet way. I had some good letters to people in England, but I didn't present them. The idea of introductions became a bore as I got nearer to it." "And, of course, you didn't elope with the marquise?" "Was that in my scheme? Well--no, I did not." "You might have done worse, old man. You ought to have a wife, to keep you from getting rusty up here. And, besides, a fellow that goes so much into genealogy should take some interest in posterity. You ought to cultivate the science practically." "Oh, I'm past all danger of matrimony now," said Berkeley, with a laugh. "There was a girl that I was rather sweet on a few years ago. I was looking up a pedigree for her papa, and I found that I was related to her myself, in eight different ways, though none of them very near. I explained it to her one evening. It took me an hour to do it, and I fancy she thought it a little slow. At all events, when I afterward hinted that we might make the eight ways nine, she answered that our relationship was so intricate already that she couldn't think of complicating it any further. No, you may put me down as safe." After this, we sat listening in silence to the distant beat of paddle-wheels where a steamer was moving up river.