st is a kind of scientific person
engaged in the correct assembling of chemical constituents that will
produce a formula by which he can live out every one of his moments
with a perfect comprehension of their charm and of their everlasting
value to him. If the romanticist have the advantage of comprehension
of the sense of beauty as related to art, then he may be said to be
wholly equipped for the exquisite legend of life in which he takes his
place, as factor in the perfected memory of existence, which becomes
the real history of life, as an idea. The person of most power in life
is he who becomes high magician with the engaging and elusive trick.

It is a fairy-tale in itself if you will, and everyone is entitled to
his or her own private splendor, which, of course, must be invented
from intelligence for oneself.

There will be no magic found away from life. It is what you do with
the street-corner in your brain that shall determine your gift. It
will not be found in the wilderness, and in one's toying with the
magic of existence is the one gift for the management of experience.

I hope one day, when life as an "idea" permits, and that I have
figured will be somewhere around my ninetieth year, to take up books
that absorb the brains of the intelligent. When I read a book, it is
because it will somehow expose to me the magic of existence. My fairy
tales of late have been "Wuthering Heights," and the work of the
Brothers James, Will and Henry. I am not so sure but that I like
William best, and I assure you that is saying a great deal, but it is
only because I think William is more like life as idea.

I shall hope when it comes time to sit in a garden and fold one's
hands gently, listening to the birds all over again, watching the
blossoms swinging with a still acuter eye, to take up the books of
Grimm and Andersen, for I have a feeling they will be the books that
will best corroborate my comprehension of life as an idea. I think it
will be the best time to read them then, to go out with a memory
softened by the warm hues and touches of legend that rise out of the
air surrounding life itself.

There will be a richer comprehension of "once upon a time there was a
princess"--who wore a great many jewelled rings on her fingers and
whose eyes were like deep pools in the farthest fields of the sky--for
that will be the lady who let me love in the ways I was made to
forget; the lady whose hands I have touched as gently as