hrew it out of the window. I lay until eight
o'clock, communing with infinite peace. I began to see that Professor
Tagore was right. My wife asked me if I was going to the office. "I am
brooding upon eternal beauty," I told her.

She thought I was ill, and made me take breakfast in bed.

I usually shave every morning, but a moment's thought will convince you
that mystics do not do so. I determined to grow a beard. I lit a cigar,
and replied "I am a mystic" to all my wife's inquiries.

At nine o'clock came a telephone call from the office. My employer is
not a devotee of eternal calm, I fear. When I explained that I was at
home reading "Gitanjali," his language was far from mystical. "Get here
by ten o'clock or you lose your job," he said.

I was dismayed to see the same old throng in the subway, all the
senseless scuffle and the unphilosophic crowd. But I felt full of
gladness in my new way of life, full of brotherhood for all the world.
"I love you," I said to the guard on the platform. He seized me by the
shoulders and rammed me into the crowded car, shouting "Another nut!"

When I reached the office my desk was littered with a hundred papers.
The stenographer was at the telephone, trying to pacify someone. "Here
he is now," I heard her say.

It was Dennis & Company on the wire.

"How about that carload of Bavarian herrings we were to have yesterday
without fail?" said Dennis.

I took the 'phone.

"In God's good time," I said, "the shipment will arrive. The matter is
purely ephemeral, after all. If you will attune yourself--"

He rang off.

I turned over the papers on my desk. Looked at with the unclouded eye of
a mystic, how mundane and unnecessary all these pettifogging
transactions seemed. Two kegs of salt halibut for the Cameron Stores,
proofs of the weekly ad. for the _Fishmongers' Journal_, a telegram from
the Uptown Fish Morgue, new tires needed for one of the delivery
trucks--how could I jeopardize my faculty of meditation by worrying over
these trifles? I leaned back in my chair and devoted myself to
meditation. After all, the harassing domination of material things can
easily be thrown off by a resolute soul. I was full of infinite peace. I
seemed to see the future as an ever-widening vista of sublime visions.
My soul was thrilled with a universal love of humanity.

The buzzer on my desk sounded. That meant that the boss wanted to see
me.

Now, it has always seemed to me that to put one's sel