ly to envy some of the desirable things that he sees; and the
fault is perhaps excusable: at any rate an occasional touch of the
claw, an _effleurement_ now and then of the passion, need not surprise
us, even when we do not excuse it, in London or Pekin. But in the
Patagonian civilization, however important it may be to the progress
of the world, what does such a man find to envy? Surely the higher
provocatives to that weakness are not abundant. Hereditary wealth,
ancient family dignities, culture, scholarship, imposing genius--these
do not surround him, these do not confront him with his inferiority as
they do, let us say, in this country. It is we, then, who are the
unhappy ones in this respect; but we can understand, at least, the
weakness of brethren who may be a little shaken by the contemplation
of all the desirable things in which the richer civilizations abound.

[5] [Greek: Me nyn en ethos mounon en sauto phorei,
Hos phes sy, kouden allo, tout' orthos echein.]

--_Antigone_.

Yes, the careers which we may observe from day to day may certainly
prove stumbling blocks to some of us. The thriving politician or
contractor, for instance, Dives in his barouche, the blooming members
of literary cliques, the fashionable clergymen and poets, chorusing
gently to feminine audiences, who listen intent, perhaps even "weeping
in a rapturous sense of art," as Heine tells us the women of his day
wept when they heard the sweet voices of the evirates singing of
passion, of

Liebes fehnen,
Von Lieb' und Liebeserguss--

how admirable are all these characters! These, indeed, are careers to
move any but the steadfast mind.

And yet, even in Philistia, it is not every one that will yearn after
successes like these. In Philistia, far from the promised land, the
exile may yet contemplate without desire all these desirable things,
envying neither them nor their possessors. He may even indulge in a
saving scorn of them, a scorn of the main achievements, the popular men
of the Philistine community; bathing himself in irony as a tonic
against the spiritual malaria. Such a man I once knew, a man of
Askelon. He lived in that rich city as a recluse, and according to any
standard recognized in Askelon, he was not rich. On this text he would
sometimes quote delightful old Rutebeuf:

Je ne sai par ou je coumance,
Tant ai de matyere abondance
Por parleir de ma povretei.

Yet this man wa