inches with your lordship, or with you, my hedgerow acquaintance. Take me
for a man, decently furnished within, or take me not at all. Take me
never, at least, for a clothes-horse." In all these things, which he had
proclaimed far and wide, in divers tongues, all of them eloquent, he had
violated the unwritten laws of our country as great and small know them to
be. Chiefest he broke them in being happy. That was outrageous. But he was
now, it seemed, confronted with a Law of Nature when he found that, having
broken with a way of life, you cannot resume it, not because it isn't
there (for there it is), but rather because you are not there yourself.
You are elsewhere, and the road is hard to find. At forty-two you are not
the mountaineer of thirty-five. Worse than that, worst sign of all, you
don't want to be.

Here was a shock for the poet in him, which it was the philosopher's task
to allay. In heated debate the two contended for his reasonable soul.

_Poet_. I am young.

_Philosopher_. You put it so. You are forty-two, and as old as you feel.

_Poet_. Away with you. I am young, I tell you. There are worlds to see.

_Philosopher_. Europe, Asia, Africa--

_Poet_. Alas! I have never been to Tibet.

_Philosopher_. My friend, if you wished to see Tibet you would be half-way
there by now. I know you so well. Believe me you have seen more than
enough. The world is so much larger than you, that five-and-twenty acres
in Sussex will yield you more wonders than you can use. Take them, make