goes to the proposed end. The
bee's flight--a specimen wonder--is not straighter than her course. In
her lower business, she needs no backers. Meddling only monsters her. It
is only when she comes to the grand, resulting combination, for which
she has so long been fussing and preparing--when she tries her hand
('her 'prentice han', I fear,) on man, that she falters, hesitates, and
lastly compromises for something lamentably less than she bargained for.

'Her apparent purpose seems almost inevitably thwarted by some
influence--shall we call it malign? or rather shall we consider (as
perhaps we should in all short-comings) that 'tis only a matter of time
and the comparative degree? a piece of circuition needed for variety of
development, and, of necessity, to eventuate in forms fresher, more
_prononces_, nearer perfect than any thing we now wot or conceive of.

'To my thinking, the hitch is, that just at this point, she has got
complicated with the wills and motions of intelligences already
individualized and eliminated, and forever alienated from her immediate
impulse. And if this be so, depend on it, the _onus_ of the attempted
perfection comes a good deal upon us. The mighty Mother, unsatisfied in
her fantastic longings, and troubled generally [_Greek: dia to
tiktein_], should be helped and not bothered by her children. We can
remove vexations, can arrange conditions, keep the house quiet
generally. At any rate, we can take such care as may be of the smaller
young ones, help them up-stairs, or at least keep them from tumbling
down again--we bigger babies that have crawled or been pushed a few
steps up the awful stairway of the Inconceivable Ascending-Spiral.'

'I say, Dick, stop your metaphysics.'

'You are quite right, Tom, they are threadbare enough; but these happen
to be _physics_. I don't mean such as you had to take last week, after
that sleigh-ride. Well, I remember feeling this intense communism, this
voltaic _rapport_ with nature in a like way once before, on seeing a
covey of strange creatures, Aztecs, Albinos, wild Africans, busied, by
chance, in a game of romps together, the pure overflow of animal
spirits. It was a curious scene. They made eerie faces at each other;
they feigned assaults; they wove a maze, more fantastic and bizarre than
any thing in _Faust_ or _Freysehutz_. It was the mirth of Fauns, the
mischief of Elves and Brownies. The glee, that lighted up those strange
faces was not of this earth