As if this were not enough to hinder, the desk must be cleared for exit—­the office desk; for the place that knew me through seven long years of trouble, anxiety, insult, joy, humiliation, satisfaction, achievement, companionship, hope, shall soon know me no more, forever.

Verily, I say unto you, that if ever mortal man or mortal mind needed rest, recreation, recuperation, and other alliterative things, that same man is now writing to the Lady Elizabeth Ellis, of Terraced Garden, in Camden, by the Wateree.  And he is writing without hope that he will see the Lady and her Lord and the Princeling, for moons and moons.  This is a sad, sad word for him to write.  But the whole world is skew-jee, awry, distorted and altogether perverse.  The President is broken in body, and obstinate in spirit.  Clemenceau is beaten for an office he did not want.  Einstein has declared the law of gravitation outgrown and decadent.  Drink, consoling friend of a Perturbed World, is shut off; and all goes merry as a dance in hell!

Oh God, I pray, give me peace and a quiet chop.  I do not ask for power, nor for fame, nor yet for wealth.  Lift me on the magic carpet of the Infinite Wish and lay me down on a grassy slope, looking out on a quiet sunny sea, and make me to dream that men are gentle and women reasonable.  And forgive us our trespasses, Amen!

And again I pray—­Give me patience.  Let me not ask for today what may not come until tomorrow.  Let mine eyes not be filled with visions of things as they would be in a world wherein men were Gods.  Let mine ears be closed to Siren calls which lure to the rocks.  Stiffen my soul to make the climb.  Keep from my heart cynical despair.  Make my mouth to speak slow words, and curb my tongue that it may not outrun the Wisdom taught by the years.  Give surety to my steps, O Lord, and lead me by the hand for I know not the way.

Your telegram lures as your letter did.  But such pleasures are not for us, because of our sins.  “And those that are good shall be happy!”

Work.  Work.  Work.  It is the order of the One Supreme.  It keeps us from being foolish, and doing as fools do.  It is needed for the mastery of a world that has its Destiny written, as surely as we have ours.  It is a chain and a pair of wings; it binds and it releases.  It is the master of the creature and the tool of the Creator.  It is hell, and it lifts us out of hell into heaven.  It was not known in Paradise, but there could be no Paradise without it.  A curse and a Savior!  Our life-term sentence and the one plan of salvation!  Work for the weary, the wasted, and the worn.  Work—­ for the joyous, the hopeful, the serene.  Work—­for the benevolent and the malevolent, the just and the cruel, the thoughtful and the unheeding.  Work—­for things that life needs, for things that are illusions, for dead-sea fruit, for ashes; and work for a look at the stars, for the sense of things made happier for many men, for the lifting of loads from tired backs, for the smile of a tender girl, for the soft touch of a grateful mother, for the promise it brings to the boy of one’s hopes.