plays at Indian, for he fashions the universe to his desires. But some
men too can lift themselves, though theirs is an intellectual bootstrap,
into a life that moves above these denser airs. Theirs is an intensity
that goes deeper than daydreaming, although it admits distant kinship.
Through what twilight and shadows do such men climb until night and
star-dust are about them! Theirs is the dizzy exaltation of him who mounts
above the world. Alas, in me is no such unfathomable mystery. I but trick
myself. Yet I have my moments. These stones that I carry on the mountain,
what of them? On what windy ridge do I build my castle? It is shrill and
bleak, they say, on the topmost peaks of the Delectable Mountains, so
lower down I have reared its walls. There is no storm in these upland
valleys and the sun sits pleasantly on their southern slopes. But even if
there be unfolded no broad prospect from the devil to the sunrise, there
are pleasant cottages in sight and the smoke of many suppers curling up.

If you happened to have been a freshman at Yale some eighteen years ago
and were at all addicted to canoeing on Lake Whitney, and if, moreover, on
coming off the lake there burned in you a thirst for ginger-beer--as is
common in the gullet of a freshman--doubtless you have gone from the
boathouse to a certain little white building across the road to gratify
your hot desires. When you opened the door, your contemptible person--I
speak with the vocabulary of a sophomore--is proclaimed to all within by
the jangling of a bell. After due interval wherein you busy yourself in an
inspection of the cakes and buns that beam upon you from a show-case--your
nose meanwhile being pressed close against the glass for any slight
blemish that might deflect your decision (for a currant in the dough often
raises an unsavory suspicion and you'll squint to make the matter
sure)--there will appear through a back door a little old man to minister
unto you. You will give no great time to the naming of your drink--for the
fires are hot in you--but will take your bottle to a table. The braver
spirits among you will scorn glasses as effeminate and will gulp the
liquor straight from the bottle with what wickedest bravado you can
muster.

Now it is likely that you have done this with a swagger and have called
your servitor "old top" or other playful name. Mark your mistake! You were
in the presence, if you but knew it, of a real author, not a tyro fumbling