—­I have noticed that the Master very rarely fails to come back to his original proposition, though he, like myself, is fond of zigzagging in order to reach it.  Men’s minds are like the pieces on a chess-board in their way of moving.  One mind creeps from the square it is on to the next, straight forward, like the pawns.  Another sticks close to its own line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for others’ opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own color.  And another class of minds break through everything that lies before them, ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end of the board, like the castle.  But there is still another sort of intellect which is very apt to jump over the thought that stands next and come down in the unexpected way of the knight.  But that same knight, as the chess manuals will show you, will contrive to get on to every square of the board in a pretty series of moves that looks like a pattern of embroidery, and so these zigzagging minds like the Master’s, and I suppose my own is something like it, will sooner or later get back to the square next the one they started from.

The Master took down a volume from one of the shelves.  I could not help noticing that it was a shelf near his hand as he sat, and that the volume looked as if he had made frequent use of it.  I saw, too, that he handled it in a loving sort of way; the tenderness he would have bestowed on a wife and children had to find a channel somewhere, and what more natural than that he should look fondly on the volume which held the thoughts that had rolled themselves smooth and round in his mind like pebbles on a beach, the dreams which, under cover of the simple artifices such as all writers use, told the little world of readers his secret hopes and aspirations, the fancies which had pleased him and which he could not bear to let die without trying to please others with them?  I have a great sympathy with authors, most of all with unsuccessful ones.  If one had a dozen lives or so, it would all be very well, but to have only a single ticket in the great lottery, and have that drawn a blank, is a rather sad sort of thing.  So I was pleased to see the affectionate kind of pride with which the Master handled his book; it was a success, in its way, and he looked on it with a cheerful sense that he had a right to be proud of it.  The Master opened the volume, and, putting on his large round glasses, began reading, as authors love to read that love their books.

—­The only good reason for believing in the stability of the moral order of things is to be found in the tolerable steadiness of human averages.  Out of a hundred human beings fifty-one will be found in the long run on the side of the right, so far as they know it, and against the wrong.  They will be organizers rather than disorganizers, helpers and not hinderers in the upward movement of the race.  This is the main fact we have to depend on.  The right hand of the great organism is a little stronger than the left, that is all.