into barking animals?

Why do we let these Abstractions and implacable Dogmatisms take
possession of us, glare at each other through our eyes, and fight their
frenzied conflicts in our persons? Life without the rancours and
ever-recurring battles of these Bogeys might be so simple, friendly,
affectionate and pleasant!

LIFE-ENHANCEMENT

I was simply telling them at tea the details of my journey--how late the
train had been in starting, how crowded the railway carriage, how I had
mislaid my umbrella, and nearly lost my Gladstone bag.

But how I enjoyed making them listen, what a sense of enhanced existence
I found it gave me (and to think that I have pitied bores!) to force my
doings, my interests, my universe, with my bag and umbrella, down their
throats!

ECLIPSE

A mild radiance and the scent of flowers filled the drawing-room, whose
windows stood open to the summer night. I thought our talk delightful;
the topic was one of my favourite topics; I had much that was
illuminating to say about it, and I was a little put out when we were
called to the window to look at the planet Jupiter, which was shining in
the sky just then, we were told, with great brilliance.

In turns through a telescope we gazed at that planet: I thought the
spectacle over-rated, but said nothing. Not for the world, not for any
number of worlds would I have wished them to guess why I was displeased
with that glittering star.

THE PYRAMID

'To read Gibbon,' I said as we paced that terrace in the sunshine, 'to
peruse his metallic, melancholy pages, and then forget them; to re-read
and re-forget the _Decline and Fall_; to fill the mind with that great,
sad, meaningless panorama of History, and then to watch it fade from the
memory as it has faded from the glass of time--'

As she turned to me with a glance full of enthusiasm, 'What is so
enchanting,' I asked myself, 'as the dawn of an acquaintance with a
lovely woman with whom one can share one's thoughts?'

But those dawns are too often false dawns.

It was her remark about History, how she believed the builders of the
Great Pyramid had foreseen and foretold many events of Modern History,
which made a gigantic shadow, a darkness, as of Egypt, loom between us
on that terrace.

THE FULL MOON

Suddenly one night, low above the trees, we saw the great, amorous,
unabashed face of the full Moon. It was an exhibition that made me
blush, feel that I had no ri