130 Autumn 



Imagination may not flutter a wing without dashing 

 it against some iron bar of possibility, and every 

 excursion of whim or fancy is arrested by the author's 

 stolid concentration on the workable. But to enter 

 with zest and seriousness into the consideration of an 

 impossible project is to afford scope for all the light 

 artillery of the mind. Any fanciful suggestion, any 

 wild whim or odd paradox lightly put forward with 

 an ' if/ may provisionally be discussed without the ' if,' 

 till, when drained of entertaining matter, the 'if 'is 

 recalled as an executioner. A frolic mood has full 

 swing when there is a luxurious absence of business, 

 and what anyone says is absolutely of no consequence. 

 Of all talkers the most amusing is the hero of the un- 

 accomplished. 



What one prizes most in the country, therefore, is 

 the excellent society it affords. I am no poet, and do 

 not refer to nature ; neither to the brown hills that 

 the sun kisses at bedtime ; nor the winds swishing 

 through the elms and lamenting on the waste ; nor 

 the summer swallows that nest in the window nooks ; 

 nor the winter robins tapping on the frosty pane ; nor 

 to any of the other phenomena whose main use now- 

 a-days appears to be the ornamentation of modern 

 prose, but to the men whose equation is unknown. 

 In town, people are all ' accomplished facts,' and not 

 only does the sight of so much crystallised industry 

 disturb an idler's tranquillity and stimulate him to 

 the exertion he abhors, but when men have adjusted 



