For a choice? Go to bed at three in the afternoon with your clothes on: dreams for you! Here’s an old bonnefemme in a pokebonnet staring into the rear of a locomotive. Or if this prove too difficult take a horse-drag made of green limbs, a kind of leaf cloth. Up the street with it! Ha, how the tar clings. Here’s glee for the children. All’s smeared. Green’s black. Leap like a devil, clap hands and cast around for more. Here’s a pine wood driven head down into a mud-flat to build a school on. Oh la, la! sand pipers made mathematicians at the state’s cost. XXV. 1 There’s force to this cold sun, makes beard stubble stand shinily. We look, we pretend great things to our glass—rubbing our chin: This is a profound comedian who grimaces deeds into slothful breasts. This is a sleepy president, without followers save oak leaves—but their coats are of the wrong color. This is a farmer—plowed a field in his dreams and since that time—goes stroking the weeds that choke his furrows. This is a poet left his own country— * * * * * _The simple expedient of a mirror has practical use for arranging the hair, for observation of the set of a coat, etc. But as an exercise for the mind the use of a mirror cannot be too highly recommended. Nothing of a mechanical nature could be more conducive to that elasticity of the attention which frees the mind for the enjoyment of its special prerogatives._ 2 A man can shoot his spirit up out of a wooden house, that is, through the roof—the roof’s slate—but how far? It is of final importance to know that. To say the world turns under my feet and that I watch it passing with a smile is neither the truth nor my desire. But I would wish to stand—you’ve seen the kingfisher do it—where the largest town might be taken in my two hands, as high let us say as a man’s head—some one man not too far above the clouds. What would I do then? Oh I’d hold my sleeve over the sun awhile to make church bells ring. * * * * * _It is obvious that if in flying an airplane one reached such an altitude that all sense of direction and every intelligible perception of the world were lost there would be nothing left to do but to come down to that point at which eyes regained their power._ Towels will stay in a heap—if the window’s shut   and oil in a bottle—if the cork’s there. But if the meat’s not cut to suit it’s no use rising before sun up, you’ll never sweep the dust from these floors. Hide smiles among the tall glasses in the cupboard, come back when you think the trick’s done and you’ll find only dead flies there. It’s beyond hope. You were not born of a Monday. * * * * *