And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government or of democracy.  They have not thought the thing out.  They hold no ordered creed of human organization or advancement.  They leave all to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance determines it.  And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have grown an inch by it.

     I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of Lake
     Saranac?

It’s the end of the year.  Mrs. Page and I (alone!) have been talking of democracy, of these very things I’ve written.  The bell-ringing and the dancing and the feasting are not, on this particular year, to our liking.  We see all our children gone—­half of them to nests of their own building, the rest on errands of their own pleasure, and we are left, young yet, but the main job of life behind us!  We’re going down to a cottage in southern North Carolina (with our own cook and motor car, praise God!) for February, still further to think this thing out and incidentally to build us a library, in which we’ll live when we can.  That, for convention’s sake, we call a Vacation.

Your brave note came to-day.  Of course, you’ll “get” ’em—­those small enemies.  The gain of twelve pounds tells the story.  The danger is, your season of philosophy and reverie will be too soon ended.  Don’t fret; the work and the friends will be here when you come down.  There’s many a long day ahead; and there may not be so many seasons of rest and meditation.  You are the only man I know who has time enough to think out a clear answer to this:  “What ought to be done with Bryan?” What can be done with Bryan?  When you find the answer, telegraph it to me.

I’ve a book or two more to send you.  If they interest you, praise the gods.  If they bore you, fling ’em in the snow and think no worse of me.  You can’t tell what a given book may be worth to a given man in an unknown mood.  They’ve become such a commodity to me that I thank my stars for a month away from them when I may come at ’em at a different angle and really need a few old ones—­Wordsworth, for instance.  When you get old enough, you’ll wake up some day with the feeling that the world is much more beautiful than it was when you were young, that a landscape has a closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor colour and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully rhythmical than you had ever thought.  That’s true.  The gently snow-clad little pines out my window are more to me than the whole Taft Administration.  They’ll soon be better than the year’s dividends.  And the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm this feeling—­they are the masters you become grateful for.  Then the sordidness of the world lies far beneath you and your great democracy is truly come—­the democracy of Nature.  To be akin to a tree, in this sense, is as good