Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of
solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight to
be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day is
not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not
his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all
quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole
world in the hermitage of himself."

Wordsworth sitting quiescent and receptive in a lakeside landscape, little
Louis standing in a corner, Sir Thomas Browne enjoying the whole world in
the hermitage of himself:--what a rebuke is offered by these images to
those who fret and fume away the leisure that is granted them at all the
waiting places of their lives!... These disgruntled travelers _nel mezzo
del cammin di nostra vita_ miss their privilege and duty of enjoying life
merely because they miss the point that life is, in itself, enjoyable.
They are so busy reading guide-books to the vague beyond that they shut
their minds to all that may be going on about them, or within them, at
way-stations. They close their eyes and ears to the immediate. They veto
all perception of the here and now. But life itself is always here and
now; and, truly to enjoy it, we must learn to look forever with
unfaltering eyes into the bright face of immediacy.

* * * * *

And there is another point about railway junctions that reveals an
important application to the larger journey of our life. A friend of mine,
who is a great lover of painting, had occasion once (and only once) to
change trains at Basle, in the course of a journey from Lucerne to
Heidelberg. He had to wait two hours at this railway junction; and this
time he pleasantly expended in eating many dishes at a restaurant, and
amusing the lax porters by teaching them a method of economizing energy in
shifting trunks. It should be noted that this friend of mine was not
trying to "kill time;" for, like all genuine humanitarians, he of course
regards that tragic process as the least excusable of murders. He was
entirely happy for two hours in that railway station. But--having packed
his guide-book in a trunk--it was not until he reached Darmstadt, some
days later, that he discovered that several of the very greatest works of
Holbein are now resident in Basle. The two hours that he had spent playing
and eating might have been devoted to an examinati