hyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and
presage: they meet the person they seek: what their companion prepares to
say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of
what is about to befall.

Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the design, this
vagabond life admits. We wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year
after year we find two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend
a great part of their best time within a few feet of each other. And the
moral is, that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from
us; as Goethe said, "what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in
old age," too often cursed with the granting of our prayer; and hence the
high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to
ask only for high things.

One key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, one solution to
the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the
propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride
alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the
equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or
plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the
other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins,
and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and
a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or
is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his
relation to the universe which his ruin benefits. Leaving the daemon who
suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit
by his pain.

To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this
lesson--namely, that by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which is
throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the
divinity, in some form, to repay. A good intention clothes itself with
sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and
shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.

Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds nature and souls in
perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. I do
not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of
the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies;
that all is and must be pictorial; that the rainbow, a