slide one over the other by a little management and
see how exactly the picture overlies the true landscape. We won't try it
now, because I want to read you something out of my book.

--I have noticed that the Master very rarely fails to come back to his
original proposition, though he, like myself, is fond of zigzagging in
order to reach it. Men's minds are like the pieces on a chess-board in
their way of moving. One mind creeps from the square it is on to the
next, straight forward, like the pawns. Another sticks close to its
own line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for
others' opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own
color. And another class of minds break through everything that lies
before them, ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end of
the board, like the castle. But there is still another sort of intellect
which is very apt to jump over the thought that stands next and come
down in the unexpected way of the knight. But that same knight, as the
chess manuals will show you, will contrive to get on to every square
of the board in a pretty series of moves that looks like a pattern
of embroidery, and so these zigzagging minds like the Master's, and I
suppose my own is something like it, will sooner or later get back to
the square next the one they started from.

The Master took down a volume from one of the shelves. I could not
help noticing that it was a shelf near his hand as he sat, and that the
volume looked as if he had made frequent use of it. I saw, too, that
he handled it in a loving sort of way; the tenderness he would have
bestowed on a wife and children had to find a channel somewhere, and
what more natural than that he should look fondly on the volume which
held the thoughts that had rolled themselves smooth and round in his
mind like pebbles on a beach, the dreams which, under cover of the
simple artifices such as all writers use, told the little world of
readers his secret hopes and aspirations, the fancies which had pleased
him and which he could not bear to let die without trying to please
others with them? I have a great sympathy with authors, most of all with
unsuccessful ones. If one had a dozen lives or so, it would all be very
well, but to have only a single ticket in the great lottery, and have
that drawn a blank, is a rather sad sort of thing. So I was pleased to
see the affectionate kind of pride with which the Master handled his