this. After a while he
remarked in an abstract, disconnected way: "I wonder why no school of
divinity has ever established a professorship of the Art of Leaving
Off."

"The thing is too simple," I replied; "theological seminaries do not
concern themselves with the simplicities."

"And yet," said he, "the simplest things are often the most difficult
and always the most important. The proverb says that 'well begun is
half done.' But the other half is harder and more necessary,--to get a
thing well ended. It is the final word that is most effective, and it
is something quite different from the last word. Many a talker, in the
heat of his discussion and his anxiety to have the last word, runs
clear past the final word and never gets back to it again."

"Talking," said I, "is only a small part of life, and not of much
consequence."

"I don't agree with you," he answered. "The tongue is but a little
member, yet behold how great a fire it kindles. Talking, rightly
considered, is the expression and epitome of life itself. All the other
arts are but varieties of talking. And in this matter of the importance
of the final touch, the point at which one leaves off, talking is just
a symbol of everything else that we do. It is the last step that costs,
says the proverb; and I would like to add, it is the last step that
counts."

"Be concrete," I begged, "I like you best that way."

"Well," he continued, "take the small art of making artificial flies
for fishing. The knot that is hardest to tie is that which finishes off
the confection, and binds the feathers and the silk securely to the
hook, gathering up the loose ends and concealing them with invisible
firmness. I remember, when I first began to tie flies, I never could
arrive at this final knot, but kept on and on, winding the thread
around the hook and making another half-hitch to fasten the ones that
were already made, until the alleged fly looked like a young ostrich
with a sore throat.

"Or take the art of sailing a boat. You remember Fanny Adair? She had a
sublime confidence in herself that amounted to the first half of
genius. She observed that, given a wind and a sail and a rudder, any
person of common sense could make a boat move along. So she invited a
small party of equally inexperienced friends to go out with her in a
cat-boat on Newport harbour. The wind was blowing freshly and steadily
towards the wharf, and neither the boat-keeper nor I suspected any lack
i