his easy chair to puff
at a pipe. I must note down one of his phrases which tickled me--he has
such a knack for the proverbial and the epigrammatic. 'He's cut his
cloth, he can wear his breeches,' he said of a certain scapegrace. He
chuckled over the Suffolk phrase 'a chance child,' for a bastard
(alluding to one such of his acquaintance in old days). He constantly
speaks of things he wants to do 'before I tarn my toes up to the
daisies.' He told me old tales of Woodbridge in the time of the
Napoleonic wars when there was a garrison of 5,000 soldiers quartered
here--this was one of the regions in which an attack by Boney was
greatly feared. He says that the Suffolk phrase 'rafty weather' (meaning
mist or fog) originates from that time, as being weather suitable for
the French to make a surprise attack by rafts or flat-boats.

"He chuckled over the reminiscence that he was once a great hand at
writing obituary notices for the local paper. 'Weep, weep for him who
cried for us,' was the first line of his epitaph upon a former
Woodbridge town crier! I was thinking that it would be hard to do him
justice when the time comes to write his. May he have a swift and
painless end such as his genial spirit deserves, and not linger on into
a twilight life with failing senses. When his memory and his pipe and
his books begin to fail him, when those keen old eyes grow dim and he
can no longer go to sniff the salt air on the river-wall--then may the
quick and quiet ferryman take dear old John Loder to the shadow land."

A VENTURE IN MYSTICISM

I had heard so much about this Rabbi Tagore and his message of calm for
our hustling, feverish life, that I thought I would try to put some of
that stuff into practice.

"Shut out the clamour of small things. Withdraw into the deep quiet of
your soul, commune with infinite beauty and infinite peace. You must be
full of gladness and love for every person and every tiniest thing.
Great activity and worry is needless--it is poison to the soul. Learn to
reflect, and to brood upon eternal beauty. It is the mystic who finds
all that is most precious in life. The flowers of meditation blossom in
his heart." I cut out these words and pasted them in my hat. I have
always felt that my real genius lies in the direction of philosophic
calm. I determined to override the brutal clamour of petty things.

The alarm clock rang as usual at 6.30. Calmly, with nothing but lovely
thoughts in my mind, I t