surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an
architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. It is a part of
vital design and has a history; and man does not go erect but at a price
of weariness and pain. How weak it is may be seen from a footprint: for
nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked
foot.

Tender, too, is the silence of human feet. You have but to pass a season
amongst the barefooted to find that man, who, shod, makes so much ado, is
naturally as silent as snow. Woman, who not only makes her armed heel
heard, but also goes rustling like a shower, is naturally silent as snow.
The vintager is not heard among the vines, nor the harvester on his
threshing-floor of stone. There is a kind of simple stealth in their
coming and going, and they show sudden smiles and dark eyes in and out of
the rows of harvest when you thought yourself alone. The lack of noise
in their movement sets free the sound of their voices, and their laughter
floats.

But we shall not praise the "simple, sweet" and "earth-confiding feet"
enough without thanks for the rule of verse and for the time of song. If
Poetry was first divided by the march, and next varied by the dance, then
to the rule of the foot are to be ascribed the thought, the instruction,
and the dream that could not speak by prose. Out of that little physical
law, then, grew a spiritual law which is one of the greatest things we
know; and from the test of the foot came the ultimate test of the
thinker: "Is it accepted of Song?"

The monastery, in like manner, holds its sons to little trivial rules of
time and exactitude, not to be broken, laws that are made secure against
the restlessness of the heart fretting for insignificant
liberties--trivial laws to restrain from a trivial freedom. And within
the gate of these laws which seem so small, lies the world of mystic
virtue. They enclose, they imply, they lock, they answer for it. Lesser
virtues may flower in daily liberty and may flourish in prose; but
infinite virtues and greatness are compelled to the measure of poetry,
and obey the constraint of an hourly convent bell. It is no wonder that
every poet worthy the name has had a passion for metre, for the very
verse. To him the difficult fetter is the condition of an interior range
immeasurable.

HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT

Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy
ceased,