... And then at last, I went down alone and empty-handed to the shore, meditated on God with sun and sand and flowing airs.... All matter is scaffolding which falls away. A man thinks he builds a house for himself, but no sooner has he put on the last tile than death or the open road calls. He chooses his climate and grows out of it. He thinks he must possess, that he must hoard against a rainy day, and he gathers the stuff of death about him. If he cannot rise, death covers him for the time. Dr. Duprez didn't speak of the care of his orchard, or his garden. It was all _story_ to me. Dear R.L.S. He didn't dream of the work of the hand necessary to keep up an orchard, and have a connoisseur's joy for a few summer days of the year. He didn't tell of the parasites, the sprinklings, the arsenates and pumps, nor of the little winged migrators that sit on the hills, waiting for the potatoes to come up. The call comes to possess nothing. It had better be answered. 11 THE SPECTATOR Some of us here have swiftly reviewed certain old slaveries, that we may set free the children of to-day.... They do not have to make the same mistakes we did. I, at thirty-nine, say to those ten and twenty and thirty years younger: "Start where I leave off. I do not relieve you of pain or error or shortsightedness, of passion or pleasure, or anything that arouses or wears down body and soul. Only this I ask you--don't make the same mistakes I did. Let me give you the answer to a few petty and pestiferous lures. I can put you right on them. Begin now to learn your lessons by doing things wrong at first, a holy way to get somewhere, but be a pioneer in your evils; be daring and fastidious and full-powered and discriminating in your faults! Above all, be impersonal in them as soon as possible. Let the winds of the world breeze through. It's all a Laugh." Every process of the world to-day is designed to take away that adorable love and listening of the child to its own soul. Streets, schools, trade, neighbours, houses in rows, priests, pastors, charlatans, all standardise. A thousand teachers in technic for one in the spirit of things; ten thousand teachers of the health of the body (and every one wrong) for one who shows the way to the single and sacred fountain of youth; innumerable voices lifted in fly-dronings of instruction, how to fill the bin and the brain, the bank and the bourse--how to have and to hold and to die holding, and to bury oneself in the midst of--for one who laughs and plays and dares to watch the world go by.... At last to be the Spectator!