He heaved a sigh of complete satisfaction.  “You have comforted my mind,” he said, “with the joys of anticipation—­a goose, a big goose.”

So I left him and went onward toward the Starkweathers’.  Presently I saw the great house standing among its wintry trees.  There was smoke in the chimney but no other evidence of life.  At the gate my spirits, which had been of the best all the morning, began to fail me.  Though Harriet and I were well enough acquainted with the Starkweathers, yet at this late moment on Christmas morning it did seem rather a hair-brained scheme to think of inviting them to dinner.

“Never mind,” I said, “they’ll not be displeased to see me anyway.”

I waited in the reception-room, which was cold and felt damp.  In the parlour beyond I could see the innumerable things of beauty—­furniture, pictures, books, so very, very much of everything—­with which the room was filled.  I saw it now, as I had often seen it before, with a peculiar sense of weariness.  How all these things, though beautiful enough in themselves, must clutter up a man’s life!

Do you know, the more I look into life, the more things it seems to me I can successfully lack—­and continue to grow happier.  How many kinds of food I do not need, nor cooks to cook them, how much curious clothing nor tailors to make it, how many books that I never read, and pictures that are not worth while!  The farther I run, the more I feel like casting aside all such impedimenta—­lest I fail to arrive at the far goal of my endeavour.

I like to think of an old Japanese nobleman I once read about, who ornamented his house with a single vase at a time, living with it, absorbing its message of beauty, and when he tired of it, replacing it with another.  I wonder if he had the right way, and we, with so many objects to hang on our walls, place on our shelves, drape on our chairs, and spread on our floors, have mistaken our course and placed our hearts upon the multiplicity rather than the quality of our possessions!

Presently Mr. Starkweather appeared in the doorway.  He wore a velvet smoking-jacket and slippers; and somehow, for a bright morning like this, he seemed old, and worn, and cold.

“Well, well, friend,” he said, “I’m glad to see you.”

He said it as though he meant it.

“Come into the library; it’s the only room in the whole house that is comfortably warm.  You’ve no idea what a task it is to heat a place like this in really cold weather.  No sooner do I find a man who can run my furnace than he goes off and leaves me.”

“I can sympathize with you,” I said, “we often have trouble at our house with the man who builds the fires.”

He looked around at me quizzically.

“He lies too long in bed in the morning,” I said.