ver) be accomplished, the feverish unrests and
damnable indecisions, that it takes all my easy-going spirits to come
through. A vane can live out anything in the shape of a wind; and that
is how I can be, and am, a more serious person than you. Just as the
light French seemed very serious to Sterne, light L. Stevenson can
afford to bob about over the top of any deep sea of prospect or
retrospect, where ironclad C. Baxter would incontinently go down with
all hands. A fool is generally the wisest person out. The wise man must
shut his eyes to all the perils and horrors that lie round him; but the
cap and bells can go bobbing along the most slippery ledges and the
bauble will not stir up sleeping lions. Hurray! for motley, for a good
sound _insouciance_, for a healthy philosophic carelessness!

My dear Baxter, a word in your ear--"<sc>DON'T YOU WISH YOU WERE A FOOL</sc>?"
How easy the world would go on with you--literally on castors. The only
reason a wise man can assign for getting drunk is that he wishes to
enjoy for a while the blessed immunities and sunshiny weather of the
land of fooldom. But a fool, who dwells ever there, has no excuse at
all. _That_ is a happy land, if you like--and not so far away either.
Take a fool's advice and let us strive without ceasing to get into it.
Hark in your ear again: "THEY ALLOW PEOPLE TO REASON IN THAT LAND." I
wish I could take you by the hand and lead you away into its pleasant
boundaries. There is no custom-house on the frontier, and you may take
in what books you will. There are no manners and customs; but men and
women grow up, like trees in a still, well-walled garden, "at their own
sweet will." There is no prescribed or customary folly--no motley, cap,
or bauble: out of the well of each one's own innate absurdity he is
allowed and encouraged freely to draw and to communicate; and it is a
strange thing how this natural fooling comes so nigh to one's better
thoughts of wisdom; and stranger still, that all this discord of people
speaking in their own natural moods and keys, masses itself into a far
more perfect harmony than all the dismal, official unison in which they
sing in other countries. Part-singing seems best all the world over.

I who live in England must wear the hackneyed symbols of the profession,
to show that I have (at least) consular immunities, coming as I do out
of another land, where they are not so wise as they are here, but fancy
that God likes what he makes