“Men must abide Their going hence even as their coming hither, Ripeness is all.” This is the true common sense—all that we know, all that we shall know; but this is not the thing that we teach the children in our schools, nor is it the light by which most of us guide our lives. We invent trivial rules and conventions to belittle the life we have to lead, and make marks in the dust with our fingers to cheat an uncheatable fate. We add illusion to illusion in coward hopes of outliving the greatest illusion of all. We add folly to folly, and lie to lie, and are content that the results of our labours should be unwisdom and untruth. We add two to two and worship the mournful constancy of four. I began my article on common sense with a children’s party; I must end it, I suppose, somewhere within the limits of our unhoping lives. When the night of a hundred kisses draws to a close, and Dawn, with her painted smile, creeps like a spy into the room, men and women believe that they can see things as they really are. The earth is grey to their eyes, though not more grey than their own tired flesh, and their little hearts are quick to believe that grey is the normal colour of life. The sun comes up and tints the world with rose, and they forget their sorrow, as they have so often forgotten it before, and go their boasting way through the world they believe their own. Around them, in the light that is not the sun’s, the shadows tremble—shadows of the dead, shadows of the yet unborn. The wise cannot tell them apart. * * * * * THE END * * * * * The Gresham Press, UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, WOKING AND LONDON.