ay,
The friends I seek are seeking me,
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height,
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me.

I have been wonderfully struck by the fact that in studying the
Upanishads, and other sacred books of the East, there is practically
no reference to the kind of worry that is the bane and curse of our
Occidental world. In conversation with the learned men of the Orient
I find this same delightful fact. Indeed they have no word in their
languages to express our idea of fretful worry. Worry is a purely
Western product, the outgrowth of our materialism, our eager striving
after place and position, power and wealth, our determination to be
housed, clothed, and jeweled as well as our neighbors, and a little
better if possible; in fact, it comes from our failure to know that
life is spiritual not material; that all these outward things are the
mere "passing show," the tinsel, the gawds, the tissue-paper, the blue
and red lights of the theater, the painted scenery, the mock heroes
and heroines of the stage, rather than the real settings of the real
life of real men and women. What does the inventor, who knows that his
invention will help his fellows, care about the newest dance, or the
latest style in ties, gloves or shoes; what does the woman whose heart
and brain are completely engaged in relieving suffering care if she is
not familiar with the latest novel, or the latest fashions in flounced
pantalettes? Life is real, life is earnest, and this does not mean
unduly solemn and somber, but that it deals with the real things
rather than the paper-flower shows of the stage and the imaginary
things of so-called society.

It is the fashion of our active, aggressive, material, Occidental
civilization to sneer and scoff at the quiet, passive, and less
material civilization of the Orient. We despise--that is, the
unthinking majority do--the studious, contemplative Oriental. We
believe in being "up and doing." But in this one particular of worry
we have much to learn from the Orienta