child the less when, contorted with passion, it storms and rages? She
grieves that a little soul should be so greatly vexed. Her affection is
no jot depreciated. So, when my trees are tempest-tossed, and the grey
seas batter the sand-spit and bellow on the rocks, and neither bird nor
butterfly dare venture from leafy sanctuary, and the green flounces are
tattered and stained by the scald of brine spray, do I avow my serenity.
How staunch the heart of the little island to withstand so sturdy a
buffeting!

In such a scene would it not have been wicked to have delivered ourselves
over to any cranky, miserly economy or to any distortion or affectation
of thrift? Had fortune smiled, her gifts would have been sanely
appreciated, for our ideas of comfort and the niceties of life are not
cramped, neither are they to be gauged by the narrow gape of our purse.
Our castles are built in the air, not because earth has no fit place for
their foundations, but for the sufficient reason that the wherewithal for
the foundations was lacking. When a sufficiency of the world's goods has
been obtained to satisfy animal wants for food and clothing and shelter,
happiness depends, not upon the pleasures but the pleasantnesses of life;
not upon the possession of a house full of superfluities but in the
attainment of restraining grace.

It might be possible for us to live for the present in just a shade
"better style" than we do; but we have mean ambitions in other
directions than style. Style is not for those who are placidly
indifferent to display; and before whom on a comely, scornful Isle shall
we strut and parade? "You and I cannot be confined within the weak list
of a country's fashions," for do we not proclaim and justify our own? Are
we not leaders who have no subservient, no flattering imitators, no
sycophantic copyists? The etiquette of our Court finds easy expression,