of human tenderness. We speak of a life which sacrifices
material success to emotion as a failure and an irresponsible affair.
The truth is the precise opposite. All the ambitions which have their
end in personal prestige are wholly barren; the ambitions which aim at
social amelioration have a certain nobility about them, though they
substitute a tortuous by-path for a direct highway. And the plain truth
is that all social amelioration would grow up as naturally and as
fragrantly as a flower, if we could but refine and strengthen and awaken
our slumbering emotions, and let them grow out freely to gladden the
little circle of earth in which we live and move.

XX

It was at this time that I had a memorable interview with the Master of
the College. He appeared very little among us, though, he occasionally
gave us a short instruction, in which he summed up the teaching on a
certain point. He was a man of extraordinary impressiveness, mainly, I
think, because he gave the sense of being occupied in much larger and
wider interests. I often pondered over the question why the short,
clear, rather dry discourses which fell from his lips appeared to be so
far more weighty and momentous than anything else that was ever said to
us. He used no arts of exhortation, showed no emotion, seemed hardly
conscious of our presence; and if one caught his eye as he spoke, one
became aware of a curious tremor of awe. He never made any appeal to our
hearts or feelings; but it always seemed as if he had condescended for
a moment to put aside far bigger and loftier designs in order to drop a
fruit of ripened wisdom in our way. He came among us, indeed, like a
statesman rather than like a teacher. The brief interviews we had with
him were regarded with a sort of terror, but produced, in me at least,
an almost fanatical respect and admiration. And yet I had no reason to
suppose that he was not, like all of us, subject to the law of life and
pilgrimage, though one could not conceive of him as having to enter the
arena of life again as a helpless child!

On this occasion I was summoned suddenly to his presence. I found him,
as usual, bent over his work, which he did not intermit, but merely
motioned me to be seated. Presently he put away his papers from him, and
turned round upon me. One of the disconcerting things about him was the
fact that his thought had a peculiarly compelling tendency, and that
while he read one's mind in a flash, his