undomestic, and without the time which every father should have to train and educe the mind of his offspring; especially to give sound and substantial bread and meat to their subconscious mind when they are young.  Then, too, a father should have a religion, a sense of relation between himself and the Master, and be able to instill this by gentle and non-didactive method into his bairns, so that they may steer by the North Star and not by shiftier, flashier stars.

Yes, altho’ I am now tottering, bruised, battered, down on the floor like a prostrate prize-fighter “taking the count” and hoping for strength enough to rise, altho’ an “aged man” as I was once described in my hearing, I am the youngest thing inside that I know; in my curiosity and my trustfulness and my imagination, and my desire to help and my belief in goodness and justice.  I want to strike right out now and see the world, and having found the good bring it back and distribute it.  And I see every day things that should be done which make me long to live, even tho’ I only tell others that they should be done.  And one thing that bothers me right now is our money scheme.  I know I am far off from your standpoint, but there is something wrong when there is so great a variation in the purchasing power of things produced.  Why is not Irving Fisher on the right road?  I should like to lay a quieting hand upon the feverish desire for things which so possesses our people.  So few things will do, rich, beautiful, solid things, but not many; and then to live with them, proud of them, revelling in them, and making them to shine like well-handled bronze—­not glossily but deeply.  The great luxury we will not allow ourselves is repose; that is because we are not essentially dignified.  The soul is not respected sufficiently; it is not given that food on which it grows.  Curious, the turn of my mind now, too.  Having been thinking, and while I still am thinking, in large terms,—­the city, the state, the nation, all peoples (I have grown through them all, never really thinking of the family unit)—­I am now thinking of a nest, a roof of my own, a bit of garden, a tree of my planting—­little things, indeed, on which the mind can rest, after casting an eye over the world and talking in terms of continents. (And I wonder if the gardens of the British—­their week-ends at home with flowers and birds, may not bring them down to those little things which make for good sense, sanity, wisdom!) But I fear me I may never so indulge myself, and that is wrong—­ that a man should live for fifty-seven years and never thrust his hand into his own bit of his country’s soil—­such condition makes against loyalties that are essential.

Now I have talked with you for a long time, but not long enough.  How I should like to sit in the big re-upholstered chair beside the lamp, beyond the fire, and throw a match into your brain stuff that would start it blazing.  Yes, and I would like to gather around that fire a few whom I love.  You and Aleck and Sid. and Pfeiffer and Jack Hallo well and John Burns and Brydon Lamb and Lathrop Brown and Cotton Smith and John Finley and Dr. Gehring and John Wigmore—­the real world is very small, isn’t it?