CHAPTER XII. 
INTIMATIONS OF EDEN 
two young friends had become so 
deeply interested in the lessons of the 
sea that they felt little inclined to disturb their 
kind teacher or divert their own minds by dis¬ 
cussing any plans to relieve the widow, and so 
they passed to their boarding-house with the 
matter deferred. Their conversation by the 
way, however, indicated that favorable results 
had been obtained. 
“ Lew,” said Davidson, “ I begin to get a 
clearer conception of the true purposes of 
knowledge. If material good and vain ambition 
are the only motives, of course the results must 
be delusive and unsatisfactory; certainly, they 
are not worth the time and toil necessary to 
secure them. But when the chief end of 
knowledge is to give to man a higher con¬ 
ception of his origin, powers, and destiny, by 
opening to his mind the divine purpose in his 
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