bout no centre; they move on, to
more power, to more wealth, to more motion. There is not one of them who
conceives that he has a place, if only he could find it, a rank and
order fitted to his nature, higher than some, lower than others, but
right, and the only right for him, his true position in the cosmic
scheme, his ultimate relation to the Power whence it proceeds. Life,
like astronomy, has become Copernican. It has no centre, no
significance, or, if any, one beyond our ken. Gravitation drives us, not
love. We are attracted and repelled by a force we cannot control, a
force that resides in our muscles and our nerves, not in our will and
spirit. "Click--click--click--tick--tick--tick," so goes the economic
clock. And that clock, with its silly face, has shut us out from the
stars. It tells us the time; but behind the dial of the hours is now for
us no vision of the solemn wheeling spheres, of spirit flames and that
ultimate point of light "pinnacled dim in the intense inane." "America
is a clock," I said; and then I remembered the phrase, "America is
Niagara." And like a flake of foam, dizzy and lost, I was swept away,
out into the infinite, out into unconsciousness.

The sun was shining brightly when I woke, and I had slept away my mood
of the night. I took leave of my host, and under his directions, after
half a mile along the line, plunged down into a gorge, and followed for
miles, crossing and re-crossing, a mountain brook, between cliffs of red
rocks, by fields of mauve anemones, in the shadow and fragrance of
pines; till suddenly, after hours of rough going, I was confronted by a
notice, set up, apparently, in the desert:

"Keep out. Avoid trouble. This means you."

I laughed. "Keep out!" I said. "If only there were a chance of my
getting in!" "Avoid trouble! Ah, what trouble would I not face, could I
but get in!" And I went on, but not in, and met no trouble, and
returned to the hotel, and had dinner, and watched for a solitary hour,
in the hall, the shifting interminable array of vacant eyes and blank
faces, and then retired to write this letter; "and so to bed."

Footnotes:

[Footnote 3:

"Brother, the quality of love stilleth our will, and maketh us
long only for what we have, and giveth us no other thirst,

"Did we desire to be more aloft, our longings were discordant
from his will who here assorteth us,

"And for that, thou wilt see, there is no room within thes