we should live in touch with the
natural beauty of the earth, and let the sweetness of it enter into
our minds and hearts; for then we come out renewed, to find the beauty
and the fulness of life in the hearts and minds of those about us.
Life is complicated, not because its issues are not simple enough, but
because we are most of us so afraid of a phantom which we create--the
criticism of other human beings.

If one reads the old books of chivalry, there seems an endless waste
of combat and fighting among men who had the same cause at heart, and
who yet for the pettiest occasions of dispute must need try to inflict
death on each other, each doing his best to shatter out of the world
another human being who loved life as well. Two doughty knights, Sir
Lamorak and Sir Meliagraunce, must needs hew pieces off each other's
armour, break each other's bones, spill each other's blood, to prove
which of two ladies is the fairer; and when it is all over, nothing
whatever is proved about the ladies, nothing but which of the two
knights is the stronger! And yet we seem to be doing the same thing to
this day, except that we now try to wound the heart and mind, to make
a fellow-man afraid and suspicious, to take the light out of his day
and the energy out of his work. For the last few weeks a handful of
earnest clergymen have been endeavouring in a Church paper, with
floods of pious Billingsgate, to make me ridiculous about a technical
question of archaeological interest, and all because my opinion differs
from their own! I thankfully confess that as I get older, I care not
at all for such foolish controversy, and the only qualms I have are
the qualms I feel at finding human beings so childish and so fretful.

Well, it is all very curious, and not without its delight too! What I
earnestly desire is that men and women should not thus waste precious
time and pleasant life, but go straight to reality, to hope. There are
a hundred paths that can be trodden; only let us be sure that we are
treading our own path, not feebly shifting from track to track, not
following too much the bidding of others, but knowing what interests
us, what draws us, what we love and desire; and above all keeping in
mind that it is our business to understand and admire and conciliate
each other, whether we do it in a panelled room, with pens and paper
on the table, and the committee in full cry; or out on the quiet road,
with one whom we trust entirely, where