The mistress.  I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in the higher sense of the word.

The parson.  Nobody supposes it is to women,—­that is, if they can see each other.

The mistress.  Don’t interrupt, unless you have something to say; though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that the minister does not know.  The newspaper may be needed in society, but how quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds of what is called civilization.  You remember when we were in the depths of the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interest in the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all the struggle and turmoil of the world seemed.  We stood apart, and could estimate things at their true value.

The young lady.  Yes, that was real life.  I never tired of the guide’s stories; there was some interest in the intelligence that a deer had been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake the night before; that a bear’s track was seen on the trail we crossed that day; even Mandeville’s fish-stories had a certain air of probability; and how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve him hot and juicy and clean, and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and heat dish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems.

The parson.  You would have had no such problems at home.  Why will people go so far to put themselves to such inconvenience?  I hate the woods.  Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited as those who dwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone.

The young lady.  For my part, I feel humble in the presence of mountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness.

The parson.  I’ll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody would expect her to feel, under given circumstances.

Mandeville.  I think the reason why the newspaper and the world it carries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kind of vegetable ourselves when we go there.  I have often attempted to improve my mind in the woods with good solid books.  You might as well offer a bunch of celery to an oyster.  The mind goes to sleep:  the senses and the instincts wake up.  The best I can do when it rains, or the trout won’t bite, is to read Dumas’s novels.  Their ingenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by the camp-fire.  And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; the history is as good as the morality.

Our next door.  I always wondered where Mandeville got his historical facts.

The mistress.  Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods.  I heard him one night repeat “The Vision of Sir Launfal”—­(The fire-tender.  Which comes very near being our best poem.)—­as we were crossing the lake, and the guides became so absorbed in it that they forgot to paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as if it had been a panther story.