"It's very easy," says the barber as we pay our check; "just drop in
here once a month and we'll fix you up." And we point to:

_The wise man lives in the world, but he lives cautiously,
dealing with the world cautiously. Many things that appear easy
are full of difficulties._

* * * * *

To a lot of people who are in a mortal scurry and excitement what is
so maddening as the calm and unruffled serenity of a dignified
philosopher who gazes unperturbed upon their pangs? So did we
meditate when facing the deliberate and mild tranquillity of the
priestly person presiding over the bulletin board announcing the
arrival of trains at the Pennsylvania Station. It was in that
desperate and curious limbo known as the "exit concourse," where
baffled creatures wait to meet others arriving on trains and
maledict the architect who so planned matters that the passengers
arrive on two sides at once, so that one stands grievously in the
middle slewing his eyes to one side and another in a kind of
vertigo, attempting to con both exits. We cannot go into this matter
in full (when, indeed, will we find enough white paper and enough
energy to discuss _anything_ in full, in the way, perhaps, Henry
James would have blanketed it?), but we will explain that we were
waiting to meet someone, someone we had never seen, someone of the
opposite sex and colour, in short, that rare and desirable creature
a cook, imported from another city, and she had missed her train,
and all we knew was her first name and that she would wear a "brown
turban." After prowling distraitly round the station (and a large
station it is) and asking every likely person if her name was
Amanda, and being frowned upon and suspected as a black slaver, and
thinking we felt on our neck the heated breath and handcuffs of the
Travellers' Aid Society, we decided that Amanda must have missed her
train and concluded to wait for the next. Then it was, to return to
our thesis, that we had occasion to observe and feel in our own
person the wretched pangs of one in despair facing the gentle--shall
we say hesychastic?--peace and benevolent quietness of the man at
the bulletin board. Bombarded with questions by the impatient and
anxious crowd, with what pacific good nature he answered our doubts
and querulities. And yet how irritating was his calmness, his
deliberation, the very placidity of his mien as he surveyed his
clacking telautograph