THE GREAT MANUSCRIPT 



What a liveried retinue of obstructions one 

 may meet at the very threshold! To get a 

 new idea into such a mind may be as pro- 

 tracted a feat as getting a dozen trunks 

 through a custom house. 



Despite all this mental diversity, which 

 sometimes seems painfully extended, there 

 is for each mind, no matter how phlegmatic 

 its habit, something in the world to be 

 ferreted out, and the game is the more in- 

 teresting because one may be some time in 

 doubt what one's particular quarry is. But 

 one may start with the conviction that it is 

 never the same as one's neighbor's. The 

 Maker of the game attended to that. For 

 his outline of an individual life-play is built 

 on lines strangely like those unconsciously 

 adopted by human story-tellers and play- 

 wrights. There must be an obstacle and its 

 overcoming, a knot and its untying or there 

 is no story, no play, no life. 



Hence the interest cannot begin until a 

 man discovers what the particular obstacle 

 in his life-plot is. As on the play-stage, too, 

 the interest of the plot may be doubled if a 



173 



