THE GLORY OF THE WAY 



But it was no use. He regarded Goethe very 

 much as a Puritan might regard a good statue of 

 Buddha, with curiosity and awe, but without a throb 

 of sympathy. He told me himself that when 

 he read Balzac he felt like a man who had been 

 through a vast national museum, and was not per 

 mitted to bring anything away with him. On a 

 little shelf in his room he had a copy of Milton, 

 a much-bethumbed volume of Pascal s &quot; Pensees,&quot; 

 and a Shakspere, with the regulation mother s 

 Bible that could be found in all our rooms with 

 diligent searching, but generally poked in be 

 tween Dumas and Daudet. From that small 

 library Bannister drew refreshment that we knew 

 nothing of, and now that the years have given 

 me a clearer vision of Nature and man, I can see 

 that those books opened vistas to him not unlike 

 those he had seen when lying on his back. 



And now that I have run afield in this inex 

 cusable manner, I ought to apologize. I set out 

 to exalt the small things and have not said a 

 word about myself. Thus is one s most precious 

 egotism reduced to a postscript when he remem 

 bers. I was reminded of Bannister by the rich 

 August hedgerows, where the cardinal-flower al 

 ready burns and the fringed gentian will follow in 

 unexpected places, and the smell of the wild 

 grapes will make the air real with a Grecian tipsi- 

 ness. All these wildings of Nature have disap 

 peared from the haunts of man. He plucks them 

 up by the roots and plants his hard, dry chrysan 

 themums in geometrical dreariness. 



119 



