upon the
lantern-bearer and beats the life out of him, as in "the good old
times." The world has grown more decent and polite, although still at
heart no doubt the bad old world which stoned the prophets. It sneers
where it once stoned; it rejects and scorns where it once beat and
burned. And so Arden has become a refuge, not so much from persecution
and hatred as from ignorance, indifference, and the small wounds of
small minds bent upon stinging that which they cannot destroy.

IV

. . . Fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the
golden world.

Rosalind and I have always been planning to do a great many pleasant
things when we had more time. During the busy days when we barely
found opportunity to speak to each other we were always thinking of the
better days when we should be able to sit hours together with no knock
at the door and no imperative summons from the kitchen. Some man of
sufficient eminence to give his words currency ought to define life as
a series of interruptions. There are a good many valuable and
inspiring things which can only be done when one is in the mood, and to
secure a mood is not always an easy matter; there are moods which are
as coy as the most high-spirited woman, and must be wooed with as much
patience and tact: and when the illusive prize is gained, one holds it
by the frailest tenure. An interruption diverts the current, cuts the
golden thread, breaks the exquisite harmony. I have often thought that
Dante was far less unfortunate than the world has judged him to be. If
he had been courted and crowned instead of rejected and exiled, it
might have been that his genius would have missed the conditions which
gave it immortal utterance. Left to himself, he had only his own
nature to reckon with; the world passed him by, and left him to the
companionship of his sublime and awful dreams. To be left alone with
one's self is often the highest good fortune. Moreover, I detest being
hurried: it seems to me the most offensive way in which we are reminded
of our mortality; there is time enough if we know how to use it.
People who, like Goethe, never rest and never haste, complete their
work and escape the friction of it.

One of the most delightful things about life in Arden is the absence of
any sense of haste; life is a matter of being rather than of doing, and
one shares the tranquillity of the great trees that silently expand
year by year. The fever and restlessne