OUT IN THE COLD 



the man who is well insured, and when his house 

 gets afire, takes his tin box and sits on his lawn, 



O * &quot; 



and rather enjoys the effort of other people to 

 stop the blaze. On the other hand, they re 

 minded me of the man in the blizzard, who wraps 

 the storm about him and lies down to pleasant 

 slumbers. One cannot escape the premonitory 

 note in the frost. 



I walked briskly up and down the one street of 

 the hamlet, rather oppressed by its hearty famil 

 iarity. Everybody gave me a cheery good-morn 

 ing, and went about his business as if I were of 

 less importance than the frost. So I was forced 

 in self-superiority to become retrospective, and I 

 called on my past to come up and shine for my 

 rescue. It was very much like looking over a 

 collection of old menus that cannot preserve the 

 appetite. Fancy a man whose memories smell of 

 stale consomme. How splendid my airy parabola 

 against the burrowing in the earth of these con 

 tented souls ! What effervescent feasting ; what 

 memorable chewings and swallowings ; what rockets 

 went up night after night ; what siren faces swept 

 by with the same set smiles ; what a lot of sensu 

 ous strains ; what exquisite badinage ; what stimu 

 lant mockery of each other ! Something told me 

 that this was like looking through the empyrean 

 for the lost sticks we sent up, as if one could 

 recover the precious sizzlings and sputterings and 

 coruscating extinction. Perhaps, after all, this is 

 where the real weariness is. The truth of the 

 matter is, that a man cannot be a joyous vagrant 



219 



