eat crucible of life we call the world--in the vaster one we
call the universe--the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains
of sand on ocean's shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces;
they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walk
beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf
to their crying, blind to their wonder.

Sometimes the veils drop from a man's eyes, and he sees--and speaks of
his vision. Then those who have not seen pass him by with the lifted
brows of disbelief, or they mock him, or if his vision has been great
enough they fall upon and destroy him.

For the greater the mystery, the more bitterly is its verity assailed;
upon what seem the lesser a man may give testimony and at least gain for
himself a hearing.

There is reason for this. Life is a ferment, and upon and about it,
shifting and changing, adding to or taking away, beat over legions of
forces, seen and unseen, known and unknown. And man, an atom in the
ferment, clings desperately to what to him seems stable; nor greets with
joy him who hazards that what he grips may be but a broken staff, and,
so saying, fails to hold forth a sturdier one.

Earth is a ship, plowing her way through uncharted oceans of space
wherein are strange currents, hidden shoals and reefs, and where blow
the unknown winds of Cosmos.

If to the voyagers, painfully plotting their course, comes one who cries
that their charts must be remade, nor can tell WHY they must be--that
man is not welcome--no!

Therefore it is that men have grown chary of giving testimony upon
mysteries. Yet knowing each in his own heart the truth of that vision he
has himself beheld, lo, it is that in whose reality he most believes.

The spot where I had encamped was of a singular beauty; so beautiful
that it caught the throat and set an ache within the breast--until from
it a tranquillity distilled that was like healing mist.

Since early March I had been wandering. It was now mid-July. And for the
first time since my pilgrimage had begun I drank--not of forgetfulness,
for that could never be--but of anodyne for a sorrow which had held fast
upon me since my return from the Carolines a year before.

No need to dwell here upon that--it has been written. Nor shall I recite
the reasons for my restlessness--for these are known to those who have
read that history of mine. Nor is there cause to set forth at length the
steps by which