ings, but I feel as
though I were really doing them."

"But you never do?"

"No, I never do, but I _feel_ that I can. All the bonds break and the
wall falls down and I am free. I can really touch people. I feel
friendly and neighbourly."

He was talking eagerly now, trying to explain, for the first time in his
life, he said, how it was that he did what he did. He told me how
beautiful it made the world, where before it was miserable and
friendless, how he thought of great things and made great plans, how his
home seemed finer and better to him, and his work more noble. The man
had a real gift of imagination and spoke with an eagerness and eloquence
that stirred me deeply. I was almost on the point of asking him where
his magic liquor was to be found! When he finally gave me an opening, I
said:

"I think I understand. Many men I know are in some respects drunkards.
They all want some way to escape themselves--to be free of their own
limitations."

"That's it! That's it!" he exclaimed eagerly.

We sat for a time side by side, saying nothing. I could not help
thinking of that line of Virgil referring to quite another sort of
intoxication:

"With Voluntary dreams they cheat their minds."

Instead of that beautiful unity of thought and action which marks the
finest character, here was this poor tragedy of the divided life. When
Fate would destroy a man it first separates his forces! It drives him to
think one way and act another; it encourages him to seek through outward
stimulation--whether drink, or riches, or fame--a deceptive and unworthy
satisfaction in place of that true contentment which comes only from
unity within. No man can be two men successfully.

So we sat and said nothing. What indeed can any man _say_ to another
under such circumstances? As Bobbie Burns remarks out of the depths of
his own experience:

"What's done we partly may compute
But know not what's resisted."

I've always felt that the best thing one man can give another is the
warm hand of understanding. And yet when I thought of the pathetic, shy
bee-man, hemmed in by his sunless walls, I felt that I should also say
something. Seeing two men struggling shall I not assist the better?
Shall I let the sober one be despoiled by him who is riotous? There are
realities, but there are also moralities--if we can keep them properly
separated.

"Most of us," I said finally, "are in some respects drunkards. We don't
give it so harsh a name, b