The vestibule to experience is not to be exalted into epic grandeur. These men are going to their work with this idea, advancing like a school of fish through still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss the idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the Greeks ring in our ears, but they are vain in comparison with a sight like this. The pulse of intention does not move so that one can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but the future of time is determined by the power of volition. ROSES ONLY You do not seem to realise that beauty is a liability rather than an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp, conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything self-dependent, anything an ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt through sheer reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. You would look, minus thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too violently, your thorns are the best part of you. IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND really, it is not the business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not do it in this instance. A few revolved upon the axes of their worth as if excessive popularity might be a pot; they did not venture the profession of humility. The polished wedge that might have split the firmament was dumb. At last it threw itself away and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege. Taller by the length of a conversation of five hundred years than all the others, there was one, whose tales of what could never have been actual— were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl of certitude; his by- play was more terrible in its effectiveness than the fiercest frontal attack. The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness. THE FISH wade through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps adjusting the ash heaps; opening and shutting itself like