"

He held out his hand and as I took it there was a grasp with meaning in
it.

"Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man seated on the step smoking a
cob-pipe.

"The old woman's calling me," said the swarthy Joe.

Joe evidently held truth lightly. "So long, Walt!"

"Good-by, Joe. Sit down, lad; sit down!"

I sat in the doorway at his feet.

"Now isn't it queer--that fellow is a regular philosopher and works out
some great problems, but he's ashamed to express 'em. He could no more
give you his best than he could fly. Ashamed, I s'pose, ashamed of the
best that is in him. We are all a little that way--all but me--I try to
write my best, regardless of whether the thing sounds ridiculous or
not--regardless of what others think or say or have said. Ashamed of our
holiest, truest and best! Is it not too bad?

"You are twenty-five now? Well, boy, you may grow until you are thirty
and then you will be as wise as you ever will be. Haven't you noticed
that men of sixty have no clearer vision than men of forty? One reason
is that we have been taught that we know all about life and death and the
mysteries of the grave. But the main reason is that we are ashamed to
shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed His own individuality perhaps
more than any other man we know of, and so He wields a wider influence
than any other. And this though we only have a record of just
twenty-seven days of His life. Now that fellow that just left is an
engineer, and he dreams some beautiful dreams; but he never expresses
them to any one--only hints them to me, and this only at twilight. He is
like a weasel or a mink or a whippoorwill--he comes out only at night.

"'If the weather was like this all the time, people would never learn to
read and write,' said Joe to me just as you arrived. And isn't that so?
Here we can count a hundred people up and down this street, and not one
is reading, not one but that is just lolling about, except the
children--and they are happy only when playing in the dirt. Why, if this
tropical weather should continue we would all slip back into South Sea
Islanders! You can raise good men only in a little strip around the North
Temperate Zone--when you get out of the track of a glacier, a
tender-hearted, sympathetic man of brains is an accident."

Then the old man suddenly ceased and I imagined that he was following the
thought out in his own mind. We sat silent for a space. The twilight
fell, and a lamplighter lit t