England seems to be no more sleepily resting on her laurels, as she was
some twenty years ago. Nor does she seem, on the other hand, to show the
least anxiety that she could ever lose them. She is merely realizing
that the time is at hand when she is to win others--that one more of
those many re-births of England, so to speak, out of her own womb,
approaches, and that once more she is about to prove herself eternally
young.

New countries are apt to speak of old countries as though they are
dying, merely because they have lived so long. Yet there is a longevity
which is one of the surest evidences of youth. Such I seem to feel once
more is England's--as from my window I watch the same old English May
weather: the falling rain and the rich gloom, within which moves always,
shouldering the darkest hour, an oceanic radiance, a deathless principle
of celestial fire.

LONDON, May, 1913.




XVIII

THE HAUNTED RESTAURANT


Were one to tell the proprietors of the very prosperous and flamboyant
restaurant of which I am thinking that it is haunted--yea, that ghosts
sit at its well appointed tables, and lost voices laugh and wail and