ly exploit the credulity of fools. I speak of the sincere
believers--people like my dear old friend W.T. Stead, who was the most
extraordinary combination of wisdom and moonshine I have ever known. He
would startle you at one moment by his penetrating handling of the facts of
a great situation, and the next moment would make you speechless with some
staggering story of spirit visitors or starry conspiracies that seemed to
him just as actual as the pavement on which he walked.

I am not at home in this atmosphere of mysteries. It is not that I do not
share the feeling out of which it is born. I do. Thoreau said he would give
all he possessed for "one true vision," and so long as we are spiritually
alive we must all have some sense of expectancy that the curtain will lift,
and that we shall look out with eyes of wonder on the hidden meaning of
this strange adventure upon which we are embarked. For thousands of years
we have been wandering in this wilderness of the world and speculating
about why we are here, where we are going, and what it is all about. It can
never have been a greater puzzle than now, when we are all busily engaged
in killing each other. And at every stage there have been those who have
cried, "Lo, here!" and "Lo, there!" and have called men to witness that
they have read the riddle and have torn the secret from the heart of the
great mystery.

And so long as men can feel and think, the quest will go on. We could not
cease that quest if we would, and we would not if we could, for without it
all the meaning would have gone out of life and we should be no more than
the cattle in the fields. Nor is the quest in vain. We follow this trail
and that, catch at this hint of a meaning and that gleam of vision, and
though we find this path ends in a cul-de-sac, and that brings us back to
the place from whence we started, we are learning all the time about the
mysteries of our wilderness. And one day, perhaps--suddenly, it may be, as
that vision of the great white mountains of the Oberland breaks upon the
sight of the traveller--we shall see whither the long adventure leads. "Say
not the struggle naught availeth," said a poet who was not given to
cultivating illusions. And he went on:--

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking.
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making.
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

But though I want to see a vision as much as an