THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



over, and always find new passages and new mean- 

 ings. It is a book that goes to press new every night, 

 and comes forth fresh every morning, and yet it is 

 not like the newspaper, except that it is up-to-date. 

 Its news is always vital, you see it in the making, 

 and you are not blinded or deafened with the dust 

 and noise of the vulgar newspaper world. 



in 



I began by saying how much the beauty and 

 wonder of the world occupies me these later years. 

 How these things come home to me as life draws 

 near the end ! I am like a man who makes a voyage 

 and falls so much in love with the ship and the sea 

 that he thinks of little else and is not curious about 

 the new lands before him. I suppose if my mind 

 had dwelt much upon the other world toward 

 which we are headed, and which is the main concern 

 with so many passengers, I should have found less 

 to absorb and instruct me in this. In fact, the hypo- 

 thetical other world has scarcely occupied me at all, 

 and when it has, I have thought of it as a projection 

 from this, a kind of Brocken shadow cast by our love 

 of life upon futurity. My whole being is so well, so 

 exquisitely, attuned to this world, that I have 

 instinctively felt that it was for this world that I 

 was made. 



I have never been able to see how I could be 

 adjusted to. two worlds unless they were much 

 14 



