am a
man and under no obligation to be more modest than this most modest of
all feminine creatures? Oh, enviable freedom from prejudice! Do you,
too, dear friend, cast it from you, all the remnants of false modesty;
just as I have often torn off your odious clothes and scattered them
about in lovely anarchy. And if, perhaps, this little romance of my
life should seem to you too wild, just think to yourself: He is only a
child--and take his innocent wantonness with motherly forbearance and
let him caress you.

If you will not be too particular about the plausibility and inner
significance of an allegory, and are prepared for as much awkwardness
in it as one might expect in the confessions of an awkward man,
provided only that the costume is correct, I should like to relate to
you here one of my waking dreams, inasmuch as it leads to the same
result as my sketch of little Wilhelmina.[31]

AN IDYL OF IDLENESS

"Behold, I am my own teacher, and a god hath planted all sorts of
melodies in my soul." This I may boldly say, now that I am not talking
about the joyous science of poetry, but about the godlike art of
idleness. And with whom indeed should I rather talk and think about
idleness than with myself. So I spoke also in that immortal hour when
my guardian genius inspired me to preach the high gospel of true joy
and love: "Oh, idleness, idleness! Thou art the very soul of innocence
and inspiration. The blessed spirits do breathe thee, and blessed
indeed is he who hath and cherisheth thee, thou sacred jewel, thou
sole and only fragment of godlikeness brought forth by us from
Paradise."

When I thus communed with myself I was sitting, like a pensive maiden
in a thoughtless romance, by the side of a brook, watching the
wavelets as they passed. They flowed by as smooth and quiet and
sentimental as if Narcissus were about to see his reflection on the
clear surface and become intoxicated with beautiful egoism. They might
also have enticed me to lose myself deeper and deeper in the inner
perspective of my mind, were not my nature so perpetually unselfish
and practical that even my speculations never concern themselves about
anything but the general good. So I fell to thinking, among other
things, while my mind was relaxed by a comfortable laziness and my
limbs by the powerful heat, of the possibility of a lasting embrace. I
thought out ways of prolonging the time of our being together and of
avoiding in the future those chil