I felt that I walked with a man whose
faith was his genius.
'Of one thing I am pretty sure,' he resumed, 'that the same recipe
Goethe gave for the enjoyment of life, applies equally to all work:
"Do the thing that lies next you." That is all our business.
Hurried results are worse than none. We must force nothing, but be
partakers of the divine patience. How long it took to make the
cradle! and we fret that the baby Humanity is not reading Euclid and
Plato, even that it is not understanding the Gospel of St. John! If
there is one thing evident in the world's history, it is that God
hasteneth not. All haste implies weakness. Time is as cheap as
space and matter. What they call the church militant is only at
drill yet, and a good many of the officers too not out of the
awkward squad. I am sure I, for a private, am not. In the drill a
man has to conquer himself, and move with the rest by individual
attention to his own duty: to what mighty battlefields the recruit
may yet be led, he does not know. Meantime he has nearly enough to
do with his goose-step, while there is plenty of single combat,
skirmish, and light cavalry work generally, to get him ready for
whatever is to follow. I beg your pardon: I am preaching.'
'Eloquently,' I answered.
Of some of the places into which Falconer led me that night I will
attempt no description--places blazing with lights and mirrors,
crowded with dancers, billowing with music, close and hot, and full
of the saddest of all sights, the uninteresting faces of commonplace
women.
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