oving clouds. There is a river yonder with swimming-holes.
A dog barks on a distant road.

Presently the lad's book slips from his negligent fingers. He places
it face down upon the desk. It lies disregarded like that volume of
old Cowley one hundred years ago. His eyes wander from the black-board
where the _Merchant's_ dry lines are scanned and marked.

' ' ' ' '
_In sooth, I know not why I am so sad._

And then ... his thoughts have clambered through the window. They have
leaped across the schoolyard wall. Still in his ears he hears the
jogging of the _Merchant_--but the sound grows dim. Like that other
lad of long ago, his thoughts have jumped the hills. Already, with
giddy stride, they are journeying to the profound region of the stars.

[Illustration]

On Turning Into Forty.

The other day, without any bells or whistles, I slipped off from the
thirties. I felt the same sleepiness that morning. There was no
apparent shifting of the grade.

I am conscious, maybe, that my agility is not what it was fifteen
years ago. I do not leap across the fences. But I am not yet comic.
Yonder stout man waddles as if he were a precious bombard. He strains
at his forward buttons. Unless he mend his appetite, his shoes will be
lost below his waistcoat. Already their tops and hulls, like battered
caravels, disappear beneath his fat horizon. With him I bear no
fellowship. But although nature has not stuffed me with her sweets to
this thick rotundity; alas, despite of tubes and bottles, no shadowy
garden flourishes on my top--waving capillary grasses and a prim path
between the bush. Rather, I bear a general parade and smooth pleasance
open to the glimpses of the moon.

And so at last I have turned into the forties. I remember now how
heedlessly I had remarked a small brisk clock ticking upon the shelf
as it counted the seconds--paying out to me, as it were, for my
pleasure and expense, the brief coinage of my life. I had heard, also,
unmindful of the warning, a tall and solemn clock as I lay awake,
marking regretfully the progress of the night. And I had been told
that water runs always beneath the bridge, that the deepest roses
fade, that Time's white beard keeps growing to his knee. These phrases
of wisdom I had heard and others. But what mattered them to me when my
long young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving stars
concern me--nor the moon, spring with its gaudy