And I must say that to me lively and untrammeled conversation is the salt of daily life; and if, as it sometimes happens, one’s own thoughts are expanded, brightened, and returned to one, it is indeed delectable above all things, the true salt to be used in quantities (if you can get it). For, alas! the majority of people have no ideas, when you come down to it, or, having a few, they are pig-headed and look but into the converging point of the angle, knowing nothing of the splendor of diverging lines where self is swallowed up in unself. And there are the close-headed, whose minds work slowly in a cramped way, or not at all, and they are forever complaining that they only think of things to say when they get home and the lights are out. They might just as well not think of them (one sometimes doubts if they really do) for all the good they are to their neighbors. And there are those very thin-skinned ones who immediately get contentious, and think the arrow is meant for them instead of the universe at large, and one could go on indefinitely through the list of impenetrable heads, to whom the blow of an ax is as the brush of a feather, or cushiony heads that once dented, however, never regain their contours, and many, many others. These all need material sauces, good, rich sauces to their food, or they would find it tasteless, not having even a pinch of this other salt to season it with. And they are mostly those who do not work, but whose fathers worked—sometimes even their mothers—and _oh, là là_, the subject is endless, for everybody talks—even those who have nothing to say. V THE BALLON D’ALSACE _Sunday afternoon._—At two o’clock I started out with Captain Bernard and Captain Antoni for the great mountain known as the Ballon[7] d’Alsace, sometimes called, too, “the knot of Europe,” in an especially high-powered motor (I never know the mark of any of them, distinguishing a Ford from a Rolls-Royce only by the generally pampered feeling pervading me when in the latter). The Ballon rises like a wall at the very end of the valley of the Doller, and we passed through many villages, shining pinkly in the prismatic November afternoon, where there was much going into church for vespers, of blue- or black-clad figures. The thirteenth century-towered church of Sewen is on a slight eminence in the heart of the village, and the cemetery around it was crowded with the faithful, regretting their dead, or some, perhaps, for one reason or another (What know I?), feeling, “’Tis better they lie there.” “Live long, but not too long for others,” is an excellent device. The charming lake of Sewen, though far from the village, seen from a certain angle, reflects the tower of the church and is, they told me, of Moorish origin. These valleys and hills seem everywhere like open books concerning the dim, dim youth of the earth; I had a sense of my transitories, with those lessons written everywhere. And it is autumn, too.