eir disputes and cogitations what came back most
vividly--what seemed to fall upon one almost in a hush of terror--was
that paralysis or dread balance of desire they imagined; the predicament
in fact of that philosophic quadruped, who, because he found in each of
them precisely the same attraction, stood, unable to move, between two
bundles of hay, until he perished of hunger.

VERTIGO

No! I don't like it; I can't approve of it; I have always thought it
most regrettable that serious and ethical Thinkers like ourselves should
go scuttling through space in this undignified manner. Is it seemly that
I, at my age, should be hurled, with my books of reference, and
bed-clothes, and hot-water bottle, across the sky at the unthinkable
rate of nineteen miles a second? As I say, I don't at all like it. This
universe of astronomical whirligigs makes me a little giddy.

That God should spend His eternity--which might be so much better
employed--in spinning countless Solar Systems, and skylarking, like a
great child, with tops and teetotums--is not this a serious scandal? I
wonder what all our circumgyrating Monotheists really do think of it?

THE EVIL EYE

Drawn by the unfelt wind in my little sail over the shallow estuary, I
lay in my boat, lost in a dream of mere existence. The cool water glided
through my trailing fingers; and leaning over, I watched the sands that
slid beneath me, the weeds that languidly swayed with the boat's motion.
I was the cool water, I was the gliding sand and the swaying weeds, I
was the sea and sky and sun, I was the whole vast Universe.

Then between my eyes and the sandy bottom a mirrored face looked up at
me, floating on the smooth film of water over which I glided. At one
look from that too familiar, and yet how sinister and goblin a face, my
immeasurable soul collapsed like a wrecked balloon; I shrank sadly back
into my named personality, and sat there, shabby, hot, and very much
bored with myself in my little boat.

THE EPITHET

'Occult, night-wandering, enormous, honey-pale--'

The morning paper lay there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the
news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the
Moon--the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find
or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts
of this negligible earth?

THE GARDEN PARTY

'Yes, I suppose it is rather a dull Garden Party,' I