e things that arrest his present and unclouded eyes. No
habits would dare to live under those glances. They must die of dismay.

Tolstoi sees everything that is within sight. That he sees this
multitude of things with invincible simplicity is what proves him an
artist; nevertheless, for such perception as his there is no peace. For
when it is not the trivialities of other men's habits but the actualities
of his own mind that he follows without rest, for him there is no
possible peace but sleep. To him, more than to all others, it has been
said, "Watch!" There is no relapse, there is no respite but sleep or
death.

To such a mind every night must come with an overwhelming change, a
release too great for gratitude. What a falling to sleep! What a
manumission, what an absolution! Consciousness and conscience set free
from the exacted instant replies of the unrelapsing day. And at the
awakening all is ready yet once more, and apprehension begins again: a
perpetual presence of mind.

Dr. Johnson was "absent." No man of "absent" mind is without some hourly
deliverance. It is on the present mind that presses the burden of the
present world.

SHADOWS

Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and
unencumbered with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple house
is that the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs of
shadows. The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought oftener to be
offered to the light and to yonder handful of long sedges and rushes in a
vase. Their slender grey design of shadows upon white walls is better
than a tedious, trivial, or anxious device from the shop.

The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into line
and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, not to the
mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. It is single;
it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and will never be seen
again, and that, untouched, varies with the journey of the sun, shifts
the interrelation of a score of delicate lines at the mere passing of
time, though all the room be motionless. Why will design insist upon its
importunate immortality? Wiser is the drama, and wiser the dance, that
do not pause upon an attitude. But these walk with passion or pleasure,
while the shadow walks with the earth. It alters as the hours wheel.

Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing
so