310 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTEKS. 



that if one did not sleep soon lie was compelled to think, and 

 in connected strains of thought, too. 



Here I sat and mused much ; for, in spite of myself and 

 all my efforts at sneering, there was something in this woman's 

 wild talk that impressed me, — and in the strange life, man- 

 ners and surroundings of this remarkable recluse, that had 

 aroused my deepest and most cm-ious sympathy. These were 

 .new thoughts, — strange ideas — she had spoken. This was a 

 new phase of life to me — this isolation — this devotion to a 

 fixed purpose — this self-denial, which could sever two persons 

 from all the common sympathies of their race, and send them 

 off to remote and dangerous solitudes, — change the natm'al 

 relations of the sexes, and exalt them into the incommunica- 

 tive and apparently crazed condition of abstraction and de- 

 votion to a single idea ! 



" What is this Idea ? \Miat do these people hope to ac- 

 complish?" I asked myself a thousand times. " They talk 

 of social wrongs, — but that is no new story, — it is simply as 

 old as society, that those who can find no business of their 

 own to attend to, should, and will employ themselves with 

 the business of others, and go to work to save the world ! 

 They commonly make a good speculation of it, and are usually 

 corrupt as they are loud-mouthed, vulgar and stupid, — but 

 here seems an anomalous case. These people are clearly in 

 earnest. Women do not run such risks for nothing, nor do 

 men dedicate themselves with such singleness of purpose to 

 what they merely expect selfish returns from ! I must get at 

 this idea — and get at it I will ! These persons are evidently 

 educated, for silent and abruptly incommunicative as they 

 have been since I came, I have heard enough to convince 

 me of this much, and unravel this secret I will!" 



Such, I remember, were my musings, when, after having 

 been tenderly cared for several days, I found myself equally 

 puzzled as at first, to understand what this old man was doing, 

 or expectcdU to accomplish. He had made no explanations, 



