From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and
water: the dry earth slowly and silently adding to its domain and
spreading a broader and broader lap for its children; the ocean receding
step by step, heaving and sobbing and beating its breast in despair.
Remember the sea was once sole monarch, utterly free.

Land rose from its womb, usurped its throne, and ever since the maddened
old creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually,
like King Lear exposed to the fury of the elements.


_July 1887._

I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself before
my mind--nothing else seems to have happened of late.

But to reach twenty-seven--is that a trifling thing?--to pass the meridian
of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty?--thirty--that is to say
maturity--the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage.
But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it still
feels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy.

Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected of
you--that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot? Are we
to put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what we
shall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil which
the blindfold, mill-turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you."

It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waiting