er sticks close to its own
line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for
others' opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own
color. And another class of minds break through everything that lies
before them, ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end of the
board, like the castle. But there is still another sort of intellect
which is very apt to jump over the thought that stands next and come down
in the unexpected way of the knight. But that same knight, as the chess
manuals will show you, will contrive to get on to every square of the
board in a pretty series of moves that looks like a pattern of
embroidery, and so these zigzagging minds like the Master's, and I
suppose my own is something like it, will sooner or later get back to the
square next the one they started from.

The Master took down a volume from one of the shelves. I could not help
noticing that it was a shelf near his hand as he sat, and that the volume
looked as if he had made frequent use of it. I saw, too, that he handled
it in a loving sort of way; the tenderness he would have bestowed on a
wife and children had to find a channel somewhere, and what more natural
than that he should look fondly on the volume which held the thoughts
that had rolled themselves smooth and round in his mind like pebbles on a
beach, the dreams which, under cover of the simple artifices such as all
writers use, told the little world of readers his secret hopes and
aspirations, the fancies which had pleased him and which he could not
bear to let die without trying to please others with them? I have a
great sympathy with authors, most of all with unsuccessful ones. If one
had a dozen lives or so, it would all be very well, but to have only a
single ticket in the great lottery, and have that drawn a blank, is a
rather sad sort of thing. So I was pleased to see the affectionate kind
of pride with which the Master handled his book; it was a success, in its
way, and he looked on it with a cheerful sense that he had a right to be
proud of it. The Master opened the volume, and, putting on his large
round glasses, began reading, as authors love to read that love their
books.

--The only good reason for believing in the stability of the moral order
of things is to be found in the tolerable steadiness of human averages.
Out of a hundred human beings fifty-one will be found in the long run on
the side of the right, so far as the