lo8 Company and Solitude 



alone in quite another sense. In what men 

 call solitude I have all my friends about me ; 

 when in man's presence, all too often, I am 

 literally alone. 



I fancy that all work of value or even of 

 idle interest to the world is done in secret. 

 We can praise or blame, admire or detest a 

 crowded street ; but what we wish others to 

 know must come to us and be recorded when 

 the crowded street is a mere matter of mem- 

 ory. The ghosts of the dead centuries can 

 peep over my shoulders and peer from every 

 corner of this little room without disconcert- 

 ing me, but let some mortal in the flesh open 

 the door and my thoughts are as far off as 

 these same ghosts that but a moment ago 

 were grinning at me and I grinning back at 

 them. 



It is safe to love a ghost. Though there 

 is a delightful individuality discernible, still 

 they are much like the clay in the potter's 

 hands : we can shape them within reason- 

 able bounds. Exhilarating thought, too ; I 

 have not yet met a ghost that was not a 

 gentleman. Of ghosts of the other sex I 

 know nothing, having never seen one. The 

 former are familiar, they are of easy man- 



