sweet deliriums more soothing than Reason? If Transmigration can
make clear the dark Problem of Evil; if Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy can
free us from the dominion of Death; if the belief that Bacon
wrote Shakespeare gives a peace that the world cannot give, why
pedantically reject such kindly solace? Why not be led with the
others by still waters, and be made to lie down in green
pastures?




_The Quest_


"We walk alone in the world," the Moralist, at the end of his
essay on Ideal Friendship, writes somewhat sadly, "Friends such
as we desire are dreams and fables," Yet we never quite give up
the hope of finding them. But what awful things happen to us?
what snubs, what set-downs we experience, what shames and
disillusions. We can never really tell what these new unknown
persons may do to us. Sometimes they seem nice, and then begin
to talk like gramophones. Sometimes they grab at us with moist
hands, or breathe hotly on our necks, or make awful confidences,
or drench us from sentimental slop-pails. And too often, among
the thoughts in the loveliest heads, we come on nests of woolly
caterpillars.

And yet we brush our hats, pull on our gloves, and go out and
ring door-bells.