The weather is never altogether just what we would like it to be: it is either too wet or too dry, too hot or too cold, to be exactly to our taste; the direction of the wind bothers us--in fact, there is a happy medium which we cannot strike; and yet, with all the shortcomings, I doubt if there is a single sane Christian who would like to go to heaven one second before his or her time. Of course, we except the unfortunate insane, who rush away on the spur of an evil moment. For my own part, I wish I could live a thousand years, and envy the constitutions of the antediluvians, who could take time to do their work properly, although I will confess to moments--neither few nor far between--when I make myself as miserable and disagreeable as anyone could imagine, and yet live. The earth is all right about me, the weather is passable, the machinery which moves me along would be perfection, if custom, and fashion, and general _debility of will_ would only let it alone, and permit it to do its work in its own way, and with its own conditions. Nature endows us with tastes as simply correct as the horse's; and custom teaches us to endure, with martyr persistence, habits that are as difficult and dangerous to learn as they are hard to break from. Nature bestows upon us skin all over our body, like that upon our face, and custom covers up part of it, until it is so sensitive that it cannot be exposed; and fashion bids us bare it at the wrong moment, or else load it with all kinds of unwholesomenesses. True Art stands by the side of Nature, both ridiculed, both lamenting; while Fashion and Custom, ever capricious, ride on triumphant. For example, take the feet: I prefer to raise my eyes from the earth--to begin, as men begin to build houses, from the groundwork upwards. We muffle them in wool or cotton, and cramp them inside the stiffest of tanned skins--dead skins over living skins--and think that this can be healthy; we shape them according to a fashion--square, round, or pointed toes--never according to nature and the foot which we ought to imitate, therefore not at all according to true art, which must follow after nature, never after fashion, which must always be utterly false and ugly until it emanates directly from nature, and then there can be no god Fashion; for every man and woman will create their own ideal from themselves, and not from any brainless _demi-monde_, and their modesty will not run counter to the virtue which the great Creator planted within the human mind, nor shame be created over what He said was well done. We hobble about within our wrappings with feet that swell and sweat and steam unwholesomely, bathing them when they have become intolerable with the exhalations from the living skin, and the impurities which they have drawn out of the dead hides.