men undriven, free to do as we pleased with life; we classed
among the happy ones, our bread and common necessities were given us for
nothing, we had abilities,--it wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave
as if we hadn't--and Fortune watched us to see what we might do with
opportunity and the world.

"There are so many things to do, you see," began Willersley, in his
judicial lecturer's voice.

"So many things we may do," I interrupted, "with all these years before
us.... We're exceptional men. It's our place, our duty, to do things."

"Here anyhow," I said, answering the faint amusement of his face; "I've
got no modesty. Everything conspires to set me up. Why should I run
about like all those grubby little beasts down there, seeking nothing
but mean little vanities and indulgencies--and then take credit for
modesty? I KNOW I am capable. I KNOW I have imagination. Modesty! I know
if I don't attempt the very biggest things in life I am a damned shirk.
The very biggest! Somebody has to attempt them. I feel like a loaded gun
that is only a little perplexed because it has to find out just where to
aim itself...."

The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant
railway to Luino, the busy boats and steamers trailing triangular wakes
of foam, the long vista eastward towards battlemented Bellinzona, the
vast mountain distances, now tinged with sunset light, behind this
nearer landscape, and the southward waters with remote coast towns
shining dimly, waters that merged at last in a luminous golden haze,
made a broad panoramic spectacle. It was as if one surveyed the
world,--and it was like the games I used to set out upon my nursery
floor. I was exalted by it; I felt larger than men. So kings should
feel.

That sense of largeness came to me then, and it has come to me since,
again and again, a splendid intimation or a splendid vanity. Once, I
remember, when I looked at Genoa from the mountain crest behind the
town and saw that multitudinous place in all its beauty of width and
abundance and clustering human effort, and once as I was steaming past
the brown low hills of Staten Island towards the towering vigour and
clamorous vitality of New York City, that mood rose to its quintessence.
And once it came to me, as I shall tell, on Dover cliffs. And a hundred
times when I have thought of England as our country might be, with no
wretched poor, no wretched rich, a nation armed and ordered, trained and