a comfort that would be! Letters? The fire
as rapidly as possible! No one ought to have a good time reading over
old letters--there's always a tinge of sadness about them, and it's
morbid to conserve sadness, added to which, in the remote contingency of
one's becoming famous, some vandalish relative always publishes the ones
that are most sacred.

J---- has the pigeon-hole habit. He hates to see anything sink into the
abyss of the waste-basket, but I am training him to throw away something
every morning before breakfast. After a while he'll get so that he can
dispose of several things at once, and the time may come when I'll have
to look over the rubbish to be sure that nothing valuable has gone,
because throwing away is just as insidious a habit as any other.

If only one could pile old bills on top of the old letters, what a
glorious bonfire that would make! But that will have to wait until
the millennium; as things are now, it would mean paying twice for
the motor fender of last year, and never feeling sure of your
relations with the butcher.

It isn't only things that I am disposing of. I've rid myself of a lot
of useless ideas. We don't have to live in any special way. It isn't
necessary to have meat twice a day, and there is no law about chicken
for Sunday dinner. Butter does not come like the air we breathe.
Numerous courses aren't necessary even for guests. New clothes aren't
essential unless your old ones are worn out--and so on.

And so I'm stepping forth on a road leading, even the graybeards can't
say where, with surprises behind every hedge and round every corner.
There hasn't been so thrillingly interesting an age to be alive since
that remote time when the Creation was going on. Except for moments of
tired nerves, like this, it is very stimulating, and I find myself
stepping out much more briskly since I threw my extra wraps and bundles
beside the road. Here on my hill-top I have even enjoyed a little of
that charm of unencumberedness that all vagabonds know--and later if I
come to some steep stretches I shall be more likely to make the top, for
I'm resolved to "travel light."

There is usually one serpent in Eden, if it is only a garter snake. Ours
was a frog in the fountain. He had a volume of sound equal to Edouard de
Reske in his prime. I set the chauffeur the task of catching him, but
after emptying out all the water one little half-inch frog skipped off,
and John assured me that he could never