But apart from these, which are after all but reports of and commentaries upon the other, comes the beauty of life itself. I know it to be a shifting, lovely, changeful thing ever, and to it, the spectacle of it as a whole, in my hours of confusion and uncertainty I invariably return, and find such marvels of charm in color, tone, movement, arrangement, which, had I the genius to report, would fill the museums and the libraries of the world to overflowing with its masterpieces. The furies of snow and rain that speed athwart a hidden sun. The wracks and wisps of cloud that drape a winter or a summer moon. A distant, graceful tower from which a flock of pigeons soar. The tortuous, tideful rivers that twist among great forests of masts and under many graceful bridges. The crowding, surging ways of seeking men. These cost me nothing, and I weary of them never. And sunsets. And sunrises. And moonsets. And moonrises. These are not things to which those materially deficient would in the main turn for solace, but to me they are substances of solace, the major portion of all my wealth or possible wealth, in exchange for which I would not take a miser’s hoard. I truly would not. SIX O’CLOCK The hours in which the world is working are numerous and always fascinating. It is not the night-time or the Sabbath or the day of pleasure that counts, but the day’s work. Whether it be as statesman or soldier, poet or laborer, the day’s work is the thing. And at the end of the day’s work, in its commoner forms at least, comes the signal of its accomplishment, the whistle, the bell, the fading light, the arresting face of the clock. To me, personally, there is no hour which quite equals that which heralds the close of the day’s toil. I know, too, that others are important, the getting up and lying down of men, but this of ceasing after a day’s work, when we lay down the ax or the saw, or the pen or pencil, stay our machine, take off our apron and quit--that is wonderful. Others may quit earlier. The lawyer and the merchant and the banker may cease their labors an hour earlier. The highly valued clerk or official is not opposed if he leaves at four-thirty or at five, and at five-thirty skilled labor generally may cease. But at six o’clock the rank and file are through, “the great unwashed,” as they have been derisively termed, the real laboring man and laboring woman. It is for them then that the six o’clock whistle blows; that the six o’clock bell strikes; it is for them that the evening lamps are lit in millions of homes; it is for them that the blue smoke of an evening fire curls upward at nightfall and that the street cars and vehicles of transfer run thick and black.