MATURE TRUANTS 



&quot; I ll tell you what we ll do,&quot; he said to me 

 one evening. &quot; We ll take our sticks and get out 

 of the beaten track.&quot; 



&quot; Where shall we go ? &quot; I asked. 



&quot; Ah, that s it. We will just go like derelicts. 

 There shall be no goal and no purpose and no 

 provision, and then the way will be full of sur 

 prises. We shall never know where we are or 

 what the morrow will bring forth. We will 

 divest ourselves of all intent, and fill ourselves 

 with the delight of a road that leads nowhere. 

 Did you ever try that experiment ? &quot; 



&quot; I never did, at least, since I played truant.&quot; 



&quot;Happy word truant. Let us be truants 

 for a few days ; run away from our arrogant 

 volitions and let the great tides of unconcern 

 swing us with their ebb and flow. It will be 

 evangelical.&quot; 



&quot; Be what ? &quot; 



&quot; Evangelical.&quot; 



&quot; It might be jolly, but I never associated jol 

 lity with an evangel.&quot; 



&quot;That s because you are thinking of it theo 

 logically, and I am speaking of it etymologically ; 

 simply good news, without telegraph-wires. 

 Something like the dew, always encompassing, 

 but only obvious when you are cool enough to 

 condense it. I cannot imagine anything so evan 

 gelical as to strip one s self down to a purposeless 

 passivity and issue a general invitation to the 

 nature of things to say what it has to say in its 

 own way. Did it ever occur to you that the race 



