ter that we were silent awhile. Then I tried again. "You know your trick
of waltzing with a glass of water on your head?"

"Yes."

"Well, I wonder if we couldn't do that with our souls."

"That suggests to me a rather curious picture," said Jonathan.

"Well--you know what I mean. When you do that, your body takes up all the
jolts and jiggles before they get to the top of your head, so the glass
stays quiet."

"Well--"

"Well, I don't see why--only, of course, our souls aren't really anything
like glasses of water, and it would be perfectly detestable to think of
carrying them around carefully like that."

"Perhaps you'd better back out of that figure of speech," suggested
Jonathan. "Go back to your princess. Say, 'every man his own mattress.' "

"No. Any figure is wrong. The trouble with all of them is that as soon as
you use one it begins to get in your way, and say all sorts of things for
you that you never meant at all. And then if you notice it, it bothers
you, and if you don't notice it, you get drawn into crooked thinking."

"And yet you can't think without them."

"No, you can't think without them."

"Well--where are we, anyway?" he asked placidly.

"I don't know at all. Only I feel sure that leading the simple life
doesn't depend on the things you do it _with_. Feeding your own cows and
pigs and using pumps and candles brings you no nearer to it than marketing
by telephone and using city water supply and electric lighting. I don't
know what does bring you nearer, but I'm sure it must be something inside
you."

"That sounds rather reasonable," said Jonathan; "almost scriptural--"

"Yes, I know," I said.

IV

After Frost

It is late afternoon in mid-September. I stand in my garden sniffing the
raw air, and wondering, as always at this season, _will_ there be frost
to-night or will there not? Of course if I were a woodchuck or a muskrat,
or any other really intelligent creature, I should know at once and act
accordingly, but being only a stupid human being, I am thrown back on
conjecture, assisted by the thermometer, and an appeal to Jonathan.

"Too much wind for frost," says he.

"Sure? I'd hate to lose my nasturtiums quite so early."

"You won't lose 'em. Look at the thermometer if you don't believe me. If
it's above forty you're safe."

I look, and try to feel reassured. But I am not quite easy in my mind
unt