oft summer mornings; the fresh and fragrant air; the diffused
and misty sunshine; the sparkle of the dew on the tall wisps of
speargrass; the beaded and shining cobwebs; the scamper, barefooted,
across the glittering green! It was part of childhood's wild romance.
And, in the sterner days that have followed those tremendous frolics,
we have learned that life is full of just such suggestive things. As I
glance back upon the years that lie behind me, I find that they have
been almost equally divided between two hemispheres. But I have
discovered that, under any stars,

There's part o' the sun in an apple;
There's part o' the moon in a rose;
There's part o' the flaming Pleiades
In every leaf that grows.

And I shall reckon this book no failure if some of the ideas that I
have tried to suggest are found to point at all steadily to that
conclusion.

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

HOBART, TASMANIA,
JUNE, 1915.

PART I

I

A SLICE OF INFINITY

I

Really, as I sit here in this quiet study, and glance round at the
books upon the shelves, I can scarcely refrain from laughing at the fun
we have had together. And to think of the way in which they came into
my possession! It seems like a fairy story or a chapter from romance.
If a man wants to spend an hour or so as delightfully as it is possible
to spend it, let him invite to his fireside some old and valued friend,
the companion of many a frolic and the sharer of many a sorrow; let him
seat his old comrade there in the place of honour on the opposite side
of the hearth, and then let them talk. 'Do you remember, Tom, the way
we met for the first time?' 'My word, I do! Shall I ever forget it?'
And Tom slaps his knee at the memory of it, and they enjoy a long and
hearty laugh together. It is not that the circumstances under which
they met were so ludicrous or dramatic; it is that they were so
commonplace. It seems, on looking back, the oddest chance in the world
that first brought them together, the merest whim of chance, the
veriest freak of circumstance; and yet how all life has taken its
colour and drawn its enrichment from that casual meeting! They
happened to enter the same compartment of a railway train; or they sat
next each other on the tramcar; or they walked home together from a
political meeting; or they caught each other admiring the same rose at
a flower show. Neither sought the other; neither felt the slightest
desire for the other;