It is sad. But this is not the worst of it: for they have laid an oiled road across that desert, as if it were the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time. There is no hope for a man who gets through to San Diego on time. He will strike Los Angeles on time, come to San Francisco on time. Portland on time, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, and Hingham on time; where he will die on time, be buried on time, rise on time, and keep going on time, with never a chance to get off. But where is the adventure in that? It is not the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time. I had rather leave my bones to bleach beneath a bush than travel on and on by schedule, always making life’s connections, and so missing always life’s magical chances. Don’t you remember your Mother Goose, wise old dear? “A dillar a dollar, A ten-o’clock scholar, Why have you come so soon? You used to come at ten o’clock, But now you come at noon.” And he was the only little duffer in the whole school to get a poem written to him. The other children came on time and passed into oblivion; this boy (he certainly was a boy) came late and has become immortal. The desert is doomed, no doubt, but we shall always have détours; and if “on the surface of things men have been there before us,” we must go beneath. There are giants still in these days; the daughters of men are still fair; there are frontiers for those who will find them; and, clipper ships or no, I believe in the everlasting adventure of rounding the Horn. I believe in magical chances of escape, born though I was after my parents, which might have been fatally late had I not happily come before my children, each of whom is an adventure and an escape. Wherever I turn, I see a chance to sidestep the decorous, the conventional, the scheduled, to dodge into the bushes and escape. Every day is an adventure. There are magical human chances to go round; there is adventure and escape for everybody who will seize it. Youth is as young, the world as round, the earth as wild as ever. And, in spite of all those who have grown old, it is still appareled in celestial light--sunlight, starlight, moonlight--or else wrapped in ancient and adventurous dark. The sun still knoweth his going down, thank Heaven! There are some things that do not change nor pass away. Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. Then look out for your men-folks. For this is the end of the decorous and conventional. This is the time wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.