162 BENEDICITE 



gone out of goodness. How comes it that men who 

 in the sanctuary laud the Maker for his wondrous 

 works, hold them so lightly under other surroundings 

 that they care not even to know what manner of 

 works they are ? There is something dead in every 

 habit, it is a ghost of past endeavour, an unconscious 

 summation of efforts individually defunct. Seal up 

 the church doors for a year, throw men back upon 

 themselves, disturb the confidence of custom, break 

 their habits to restore their wills, for what a man 

 himself wills to be and do is all that matters in this 

 or any other world. 



I did not think those serious things out there in 

 the sunshine. I never think in the sun if I can help 

 it. But there goes with me continually another of 

 doubtful personality ; a respectable, fossilized being 

 who, truth to tell, is somewhat ashamed of my 

 company. He will have it that it is no small honour 

 to have been born the son of your own father ; that 

 clothes have their uses even in summer ; that man 

 of woman born requires at least two meals a day ; 

 and that the action of the sun's rays upon the skin, 

 and the exercise of walking, contribute toward 

 general bodily health. He has his own conception 

 of the cosmos, and is given to snuffing among first 

 principles and similar vanities. He has even some 

 pretension to be a human being ; and when dragged 

 through a bramble thicket, led into a quake-bog, or 

 urged along his twenty-fourth mile upon the memory 

 of an early breakfast, has hinted not obscurely that 

 he is I, or that I am he, or that both of us together 

 constitute some mysterious tertium quid. As I tell 

 this gentleman, we had better retain our separate 



