oks up
into middle day he sees only the stars above him. Could I have shared
the eremite's belief that his prayers help not merely his own solitary
soul but all souls travailing through all the world, I might yet have
remained where I was, an alien living indifferent to the common rule,
like a monk of some shunned exotic order. But with convictions like
mine, to do so would have brought the drear sense of derogation. All the
miseries of the past were as nothing to that; there was but one manly
course--to return and gird my loins for a new struggle with western
life. Within a month from the time when this course was seen to be a
duty, I was standing on the deck of a homeward-bound steamer, watching
the harbour lights recede into the distance.

* * * * *

Back once more in England, I threw aside the clinging robe of
meditation, and falling upon work ravenously, indulged what genius of
energy was still alive within me. I made haste to adore all that I had
so lately burned, making life objective, revering personal ideals, and
in the ordinance of material things finding the truest satisfaction of
all endeavour. I saw in civilization the world's sole hope; its brisk
life and abounding force took sudden hold of a fancy enervated by
dreams. Again I found a new heaven and a new earth, though earth was now
no more than man's dinted anvil, and heaven his reservoir of useful
light. I lived for action and movement; I mingled eagerly with my
fellows, and cursed the folly which had driven me to waste three years
in an intellectual swoon. Now the day was not long enough for work,
Lebanon was not sufficient to burn. I saw the western man with race-dust
on his cheeks, or throned in the power-houses of the world, moving upon
iron platforms and straight ladders in the mid throb and tumult of
encompassing engines. One false step, and he must fall a crushed and
mutilated thing. Yet unconcerned as one strolling at large, he
controlled the great wheels and plunging pistons, and brought them to a
standstill with a touch of his finger. The confidence and strenuous ease
of such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately
lain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god.
If I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath
the Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly
self-manacled, pitiful and irksome in remembrance.

But if once