t what and where
it came from!"

"Why?" said the raven.

"Because it will grow proud, and cease to recognise its superiors."

No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself.

"Where DO the worms come from?" said the raven, as if suddenly grown
curious to know.

"Why, from the earth, as you have just seen!" I answered.

"Yes, last!" he replied. "But they can't have come from it first--for
that will never go back to it!" he added, looking up.

I looked up also, but could see nothing save a little dark cloud, the
edges of which were red, as if with the light of the sunset.

"Surely the sun is not going down!" I exclaimed, struck with amazement.

"Oh, no!" returned the raven. "That red belongs to the worm."

"You see what comes of making creatures forget their origin!" I cried
with some warmth.

"It is well, surely, if it be to rise higher and grow larger!" he
returned. "But indeed I only teach them to find it!"

"Would you have the air full of worms?"

"That is the business of a sexton. If only the rest of the clergy
understood it as well!"

In went his beak again through the soft turf, and out came the wriggling
worm. He tossed it in the air, and away it flew.

I looked behind me, and gave a cry of dismay: I had but that moment
declared I would not leave the house, and already I was a stranger in
the strange land!

"What right have you to treat me so, Mr. Raven?" I said with deep
offence. "Am I, or am I not, a free agent?"

"A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer,"
answered the raven.

"You have no right to make me do things against my will!"

"When you have a will, you will find that no one can."

"You wrong me in the very essence of my individuality!" I persisted.

"If you were an individual I could not, therefore now I do not. You are
but beginning to become an individual."

All about me was a pine-forest, in which my eyes were already searching
deep, in the hope of discovering an unaccountable glimmer, and so
finding my way home. But, alas! how could I any longer call that house
HOME, where every door, every window opened into OUT, and even the
garden I could not keep inside!

I suppose I looked discomfited.

"Perhaps it may comfort you," said the raven, "to be told that you have
not yet left your house, neither has your house left you. At the same
time it cannot contain you, or you inhabit it!"

"I do not understand you," I replied. "Where am I?"