the only things worth striving
for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in upon us, and
standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome, we feel that we
are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with those dusky curtains,
the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop, but a stately temple
wherein man may worship, and where at times in the dimness his groping
hands touch God's.

ON BEING HARD UP.

It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of
writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't
think of anything clever and original--at least, not at this moment. The
only thing I can think about now is being hard up. I suppose having my
hands in my pockets has made me think about this. I always do sit with
my hands in my pockets except when I am in the company of my sisters,
my cousins, or my aunts; and they kick up such a shindy--I should say
expostulate so eloquently upon the subject--that I have to give in and
take them out--my hands I mean. The chorus to their objections is that
it is not gentlemanly. I am hanged if I can see why. I could understand
its not being considered gentlemanly to put your hands in other people's
pockets (especially by the other people), but how, O ye sticklers for
what looks this and what looks that, can putting his hands in his own
pockets make a man less gentle? Perhaps you are right, though. Now I
come to think of it, I have heard some people grumble most savagely when
doing it. But they were mostly old gentlemen. We young fellows, as a
rule, are never quite at ease unless we have our hands in our pockets.
We are awkward and shifty. We are like what a music-hall Lion Comique
would be without his opera-hat, if such a thing can be imagined. But let
us put our hands in our trousers pockets, and let there be some small
change in the right-hand one and a bunch of keys in the left, and we
will face a female post-office clerk.

It is a little difficult to know what to do with your bands, even in
your pockets, when there is nothing else there. Years ago, when my whole
capital would occasionally come down to "what in town the people call
a bob," I would recklessly spend a penny of it, merely for the sake of
having the change, all in coppers, to jingle. You don't feel nearly so
hard up with eleven pence in your pocket as you do with a shilling. Had
I been "La-di-da," that impecunious youth about whom we superior folk
are so sar