LV.

Policy A Damascus Blade, not A club.

Policy in the hands of a diplomat is like a sharp sword in the grasp of an able fencer, but policy in the hands of fools, is like a good knife wielded by a half-wit.  It takes brains to be truly politic, the unfortunate person who attempts to be cautious, and wise, and reticent, and to let policy thread every action as a string runs through glass beads, only succeeds in making himself ridiculous.  To be afraid to speak what is in your mind for fear you will make yourself unpopular, to be too cautious to mention the fact that you are having a new latch put on your front gate for fear that you might be over-communicative, to be backward in taking sides for fear of committing yourself to a losing cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelligence, but in the estimation of brainy folks it is a species of feline idiocy worse than fits.

LVI.

The constant years bring age to all.

All day long it has been trying to snow out here in the country.  To me not even June, with its showering apple-tree flowers and its alternations of silver rain and golden sunshine, is more beautiful than these soft winter days, full of snow-feathers and great shadows.  I love to watch the young pines take on their holiday attire.  How they robe themselves from head to foot in draperies of fleecy white, pin diamonds in their dark branches and wind about their slender girth the strands of evanescent pearl!  I love to watch the skies at dawn when they kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scatter sparkles of light as a red rose scatters its petals.  Where has the last year fled?  It seems but yesterday that I sat by this same window and hatched the lilac plumes unfold on that old bush that to-day is getting ready to don its ermine.  Why, at this rate, my dear, it won’t be longer than day after to-morrow morning before you and I wake up and find ourselves old folks.  How odd it will seem to look in the glass and see wisps of frosted stubble in place of the wavy locks of brown, and jet, and gold!  Ah, well, it is a comfort to think that some folks defy time, and are as young at seventy as at seventeen.  Beauty fades, and witchery takes unto itself wings, but true hearts, like wine, mellow and enrich with years.

LVII.

Did you ever read the “Little pilgrim.”