This fencing off, differentiation and allocation, these defences of the beautiful and new, and of the temples enshrining them, shall be like the walls round a new sanctuary.  We shall thereby protect ourselves from the encroaching commercial machine, its dwarfing ethics, mean postulates, and accurst conventions, and we shall rear within the walls all the beautiful that the outside world says does not exist.  We shall find a whole new world of those who despise the honours and prizes of the commercial machine, and who care not for the shows, diversions, pleasures, and gambles provided for commercial slaves.  But it will not cause those of that world to falter if the great multitude of their fellow-men scoff at them or think that they miss life.

Our work is then to separate off and consecrate the beautiful, to bring the beautiful together and organise it, not renouncing the machine, but only taking from it the service necessary for our physical needs, in no case being ruled or guided by it or its exigencies.  When we have accomplished that, a miracle is promised.  The outside world will take shape against our walls and receive its life through our gates—­it will come into relation to us even to the ends of the earth.  The new heart means the salvation of all.

With that we necessarily return to ourselves, the out-flung units of modern life, tramps so called, rebels, hermits, the portents of the new era, the first signs of spring after dark winter; some of us, the purely lyrical, spring flowers; others the prophetic and dynamic, spring winds—­who blowing, shall blow upon winter, as Nietzsche says, “with a thawing wind.”

We are many:  I speak for thousands who are voiceless.  But we are feeble, for we know not one another:  we shall know.

A new summer is coming and a new adventure; and summer, as all know, is the year itself, the other seasons being purely subordinate.  We are as yet but February heralds.  Nevertheless we ask, standing without the gates of the sleeping city of winter, “Who of ye within the city are stepping forth unto the new adventure?” Strange powers are to them; the mysterious spells of the earth, the renewal of inspiration at the life source, the essence of new summer colours, the idea of new summer shapes.  To the young men and women of to-day there is a chance to be as beautiful as it is possible to be upon this little earth, a chance to find all the significance of life and beauty that is possible for man to know, a chance to be of the same substance as the fire of stars, a chance of perfection.  It is the voice of the hermit crying from the wilderness:  “I have come back from God with a message and a blessing—­come out ye young men and maidens, for a new season is at hand.”

THE END

A TRAMP’S SKETCHES

BY

STEPHEN GRAHAM