us, two human atoms struggling hotly with questions too large for us.
The cow and the new calf were long out of sight. Horace made a motion as
if to follow them up the lane, but I held him with my glittering eye--as
I think of it since, not without a kind of amusement at my own
seriousness.

"I'm the practical man, Horace, for I want my peace now, and my
happiness now, and my God now. I can't wait. My barns may burn or my
cattle die, or the solid bank where I keep my deferred joy may fail, or
I myself by to-morrow be no longer here."

So powerfully and vividly did this thought take possession of me that I
cannot now remember to have said a decent good-bye to Horace (never
mind, he knows me!). At least when I was halfway up the hill I found
myself gesticulating with one clenched fist and saying to myself with a
kind of passion: "Why wait to be peaceful? Why not he peaceful now? Why
not be happy now? Why not be rich now?"

For I think it truth that a life uncommanded now is uncommanded; a life
unenjoyed now is unenjoyed; a life not lived wisely now is not lived
wisely: for the past is gone and no one knows the future.

As for Horace is he convinced that he is an impractical dreamer. Not a
bit of it! He was merely flurried for a moment in his mind, and probably
thinks me now, more than ever before, just what I think him. Absurd
place, isn't it, this world?

So I reached home at last. You have no idea, unless you have tried it
yourself, how good breakfast tastes alter a three-mile tramp in the
sharp morning air. The odour of ham and eggs, and new muffins, and