* * * * * Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men, following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting, always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following. * * * * * ... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has something to do with the coming of Saviours. Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is _martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only the children seem to understand.... Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul: "Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all. I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_.