you
suppose that God," I said, "is in any such small business as to make an
elm-tree like this--like THIS (look at it, man!), and put it on the
earth, have it waving around on it, just to illustrate one of your
sermons? Now, my dear fellow, I'm not going to have you lounging around
in your mind with an elm-tree like this any longer. I want you to come
right over to it," said I, taking hold of him, "and sit down on one of
its roots, and lean up against its trunk and learn something, live with
it a minute--get blessed by it. The flux of society can wait," I said.

Meakins is always tractable enough, when shouted at, or pounded on a
little. We sat down under the tree for quite a while, perfectly still. I
can't say what it did for Meakins. But it helped me--just barely leaning
against the trunk of it helped me, under the circumstances, a great
deal.

No one will believe it, I suppose, but we hadn't gotten any more than
fifteen feet away from the shadow of that tree when "The principles of
the flux of society," said he, "demand----"

"Now, my dear fellow," I said, "there are a lot more elm-trees we really
ought to take in, on this walk. We----"

"I SAY!" said Meakins, his great voice roaring on my little polite,
opposing sentence like surf over a pebble, "that the principles----"

Then I grew wroth. I always do when Meakins treats what I say just as a
pebble to get more roar out of, on the great bleak shore of his
thoughts. "No one says anything!" I cried; "if any one says anything--if
you say another word, my dear fellow, on this walk, I will sing _Old
Hundred_ as loud as I can all the way home."

He promised to be good--after a half-mile or so. I caught him looking at
me, harking back to an old, wonderfully sweet, gentle, human,
understanding smile he has--or used to have before he was a philosopher.

Then he quietly mentioned a real thing and we talked about real things
for four miles.

I remember we sat under the stars that night after the world was folded
up, and asleep, and I think we really felt the stars as we sat
there--not as a roof for theories of the world, but we felt them as
stars--shared the night with them, lit our hearts at them. Then we
silently, happily, at last, both of us, like awkward, wondering boys,
went to bed.

III--Reading Down Through

I

Inside

It is always the same way. I no sooner get a good, pleasant,
interesting, working idea, like this "Reading for Principles," arra