r being clever--'life is
a perpetual toothache.'

In this vein the conversation went on: the familiar topics were
discussed of labour troubles, epidemics, cancer, tuberculosis, and
taxation.

Near me there sat a little old lady who was placidly drinking her tea,
and taking no part in the melancholy chorus. 'Well, I must say,' she
remarked, turning to me and speaking in an undertone, 'I must say I
enjoy life.'

'So do I,' I whispered.

'When I enjoy things,' she went on, 'I know it. Eating, for instance,
the sunshine, my hot-water bottle at night. Other people are always
thinking of unpleasant things. It makes a difference,' she added, as she
got up to go with the others.

'All the difference in the world,' I answered.

It's too bad that I had no chance for a longer conversation with this
wise old lady. I felt that we were congenial spirits, and had a lot to
tell each other. For she and I are not among those who fill the mind
with garbage; we make a better use of that divine and adorable
endowment. We invite Thought to share, and by sharing to enhance, the
pleasures of the delicate senses; we distil, as it were, an elixir from
our golden moments, keeping out of the shining crucible of consciousness
everything that tastes sour. I do wish that we could have discussed at
greater length, like two Alchemists, the theory and practice of our
art.

THE EAR-TRUMPET

They were talking of people I did not know. 'How do they spend their
time there?' some one asked.

Then I, who had been sitting too long silent, raised my voice. 'Ah,
that's a mysterious question, when you think of it, how people spend
their time. We only see them after all in glimpses; but what, I often
wonder, do they do in their hushed and shrouded hours--in all the
interstices of their lives?'

'In the what?'

'In the times, I mean, when no one sees them. In the intervals.'

'But that isn't the word you used?'

'It's the same thing--the interstices--'

Of course there was a deaf lady present. 'What did you say?' she
inquired, holding out her ear-trumpet for my answer.

GUILT

What should I think of? I asked myself as I opened my umbrella. How
should I amuse my imagination, that harsh, dusky, sloshy, winter
afternoon, as I walked to Bedford Square? Should I think of Arabia or
exotic birds; of Albatrosses, or of those great Condors who sleep on
their outspread wings in the blue air above the Andes?

But a sense of guilt oppre