The Pond 



your simplicity: a spell had been cast upon 

 me ; I admit it to-day. When it is hard enough 

 to earn one's bit of bread, does not improving 

 one's mind but render one more meet for suf- 

 fering? Of what avail is the torment of 

 learning to the derelicts of life? 



A deal better off am I, at this late hour, 

 dogged by poverty and knowing that the dia- 

 monds of the duck-pool were rock-crystal, the 

 gold-dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite 

 and the sky-blue Beetle a Hoplia ! We poor 

 men would do better to mistrust the joys of 

 knowledge : let us dig our furrow in the fields 

 of the commonplace, flee the temptations of 

 the pond, mind our ducks and leave to others, 

 more favoured by fortune, the job of explain- 

 ing the world's mechanism, if the spirit moves 

 them. 



And yet no ! Alone among living creatures, 

 man has the thirst for knowledge; he alone 

 pries into the mysteries of things. The least 

 among us will utter his whys and his where- 

 fores, a fine pain unknown to the brute beast. 

 If these questionings come from us with 

 greater persistence, with a more imperious au- 

 thority, if they divert us from the quest of 

 lucre, life's only object in the eyes of most 

 men, does it become us to complain ? Let us 



175 



