And then there is that most unpleasant type of all--the man who boasts of how he will use his chance when he gets it. He always gets it, of course; but he doesn't know it. And when it comes out boldly and takes him by the ear he becomes terrified and slips back under the cover of things as they are. His is the most unattractive kind of intellectual cowardice, because it involves so many lies; it is simply a rapid sequence of boasting and fright and refusing to meet the truth. Here they all are--the uncourageous company of the second choice: the half-people, the makeshifts, the compromisers, the near-adventurers. How pale and ambling they look; how they crawl through the world with their calculating side looks, ready to take any second-rate thing when the first-rate one costs too much. Oh, it is a sad sight! We must be more brave! We must be more fine! We must be more demanding! The saddest aspect of the whole thing is that choice is such a tiny element in the process of becoming. It is after one has chosen highly that his real struggle--and his real joy--begins. And only on such a basis is built up that intensity of inner life which is the sole compensation one can wrest from a world of mysterious terrors ... and of ecstasies too dazzling to be shared. Souls are weighed in silence, as gold and silver are weighed in pure water, and the words which we pronounce have no meaning except through the silence in which they are bathed.--_Maeterlinck._ A Letter from London AMY LOWELL _August 28, 1914._ As I sit here, I can see out of my window the Red Cross flag flying over Devonshire House. Only one short month ago I sat at this same window and looked at Devonshire House, glistening with lights, and all its doors wide open, for the duke and duchess were giving an evening party. Powdered footmen stood under the porte-cochère, and the yard was filled with motors; it was all extremely well-ordered and gay. I watched the people arriving and leaving, for a long time. It was a very late party, and it was not only broad daylight, but brilliant sunshine, before they went home. They did have such a good time, those boys and girls, and they ended by coming out on the balcony and shouting and hurrahing for fully ten minutes. How many of those young men were among the "two thousand casualties" at the Battle of Charleroi, of which we have just got news?