to deceive others. They are giving their own little fancies the sanction of
the universe. The butterfly that I see flitting about in the sunshine
outside might as well read the European war as a comment on its aimless
little life. The stars do not chatter about us, but they have a balm for us
if we will be silent. The "huge and thoughtful night" speaks a language
simple, august, universal.

It is one of the smaller consolations of the war that it has given us in
London a chance of hearing that language. The lamps of the street are
blotted out, and the lamps above are visible. Five nights of the week all
the year round I take the last bus that goes northward from the City, and
from the back seat on the top I watch the great procession of the stars. It
is the most astonishing spectacle offered to men. Emerson said that if we
only saw it once in a hundred years we should spend years in preparing for
the vision. It is hung out for us every night, and we hardly give it a
glance. And yet it is well worth glancing at. It is the best corrective for
this agitated little mad-house in which we dwell and quarrel and fight and
die. It gives us a new scale of measurement and a new order of ideas. Even
the war seems only a local affair of some ill-governed asylum in the
presence of this ordered march of illimitable worlds. I do not worry about
the vision; I do not badger the stars to give me their views about the war.
It is enough to see and feel and be silent.

And now I hope Althea will waste no more postage stamps in sending me her
desecrating gibberish.




ON BLACK SHEEP