happy in constantly hoodwinking himself with
the idea that he is an important factor in some great purpose. Now in
certain moods I might attain to the lofty view of the philosopher and
Stacy Shunk. Then I would be confronted by my friend the Professor,
who would have been dissatisfied had he been the author of Plato's
dialogues or the victor of Waterloo. Then it seemed to me that the
wise man would allow himself to be hoodwinked, and would walk hard and
fast without too critical an eye on the results of his journey. It is
when he sits around that Stacy Shunk's active man is discontented, and
this is not because he accomplishes much when working, but because he
accomplishes less when idle. Here I had the example of Rufus Blight,
brought at last to expending his restless energy in chopping golf-balls
out of bunkers. So work became to me the panacea for my ills. I
plunged into the struggle harder than ever, and in working found that
self-forgetfulness which is akin to contentment. It was indeed
marching under sealed orders.

Those nights at sea the Professor's words were often in my mind. I was
terribly lonely, and I could stand by the hour at the ship's rail
looking into the heavens, and beyond them into the limitless spaces
where our vulgar minds have placed the home of the Great Spirit whose
mysterious purposes we fulfil. How infinitesimal seemed my own part in
that purpose, though I played it as best I could. I turned in vain to
those limitless spaces to ask why and for what I lived? Did I ask how
I should live, the answer came from the limitless spaces within me as
clearly as though written on this page. My mother had written it
there, unscientifically yet indelibly, in my boyhood days, and Mr.
Pound had added his few words, almost hidden beneath a mass of verbiage
about Ahasuerus, and before them my forebears had every one of them
left imprinted some sage injunction gained from their experience in
living. So I gathered my strength to do my best. But there was a lack
of definiteness in my purpose. There was no goal at which I aimed. In
my younger days I had had instilled into me the necessity of aspiring
to a particular height, to something concrete, to become a leader at
the bar, in politics or commerce, a Webster, a Clay, or a Girard. But
now I cared little if I never owned the paper for which I worked. The
task at hand alone interested me, and to that I bent every energy.

One task lay at my han