inside also--that all those quietly-talking people had
got the Moon, too, in their heads?

LONGEVITY

'But when you are as old as I am!' I said to the young lady in pink
satin. 'But I don't know how old you are,' that young lady answered
almost archly. We were getting on quite nicely.

'Oh I'm endlessly old; my memory goes back almost forever. I come out of
the Middle Ages. I am the primitive savage we are all descended from; I
believe in Devil-worship, and the power of the Stars; I dance under the
new Moon, naked and tattooed and holy. I am a Cave-dweller, a
contemporary of Mastodons and Mammoths; I am pleistocene and neolithic,
and full of the lusts and terrors of the great pre-glacial forests. But
that's nothing; I am millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, an
aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a pre-simian quadruped, I have
great claws, eyes that see in the dark, and a long prehensile tail.'

'Good gracious!' said the terrified young lady in pink satin. Then she
turned, and for the rest of the dinner talked in a hushed voice with her
other neighbour.

IN THE BUS

As I sat inside that crowded bus, so sad, so incredible and sordid
seemed the fat face of the woman opposite me, that I interposed the
thought of Kilimanjaro, that highest mountain of Africa, between us; the
grassy slopes and green realms of negro kings from which its dark cone
rises, the immense, dim, elephant-haunted forests which clothe its
flanks; and above, the white crown of snow, freezing in eternal
isolation over the palm trees and deserts of the African Equator.

JUSTIFICATION

Well, what if I did put it on a little at that luncheon? Do I not owe it
to my friends to assert now and then my claims to consideration; ought I
always to allow myself to be trampled on and treated as dirt? And how
about the Saints and Patriarchs of the Bible? Didn't Joseph tell of the
dream in which his wheatsheaf was exalted; Deborah sing without blame
how she arose a mother in Israel, and David boast of his triumph over
the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear? Nay, in His confabulations
with His chosen people, does not the Creator of the Universe Himself
take every opportunity of impressing on those Hebrews His importance,
His power, His glory?

Was I not made in His image?

THE SAYING OF A PERSIAN POET

All this hurry to dress and go out, these journeys in taxi-cabs, or in
trains with my packed bag from big