discovery: or I should say seen a vision. I saw it
between two cups of black coffee in a Gallic restaurant in Soho: but
I could not express it if I tried.

But this was one thing that it said--that all good things are one
thing. There is no conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and a
comic-opera tune played by Mildred Wain. But there is everlasting
conflict between the gravestone of Gertrude and the obscene pomposity
of the hired mute: and there is everlasting conflict between the
comic-opera tune and any mean or vulgar words to which it may be set.
These, which man hath joined together, God shall most surely sunder.
That is what I am feeling . . . now every hour of the day. All good
things are one thing. Sunsets, schools of philosophy, babies,
constellations, cathedrals, operas, mountains, horses, poems--all
these are merely disguises. One thing is always walking among us in
fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a
meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so
superbly. And that is what the savage old Hebrews, alone among the
nations, guessed, and why their rude tribal god has been erected on
the ruins of all polytheistic civilisations. For the Greeks and
Norsemen and Romans saw the superficial wars of nature and made the
sun one god, the sea another, the wind a third. They were not
thrilled, as some rude Israelite was, one night in the wastes, alone,
by the sudden blazing idea of all being the same God: an idea worthy
of a detective story.

11, Paternoster Buildings
(postmarked July 14, 1899.)

. . . costume slightly improved. The truth is that a mystical and
fantastic development has taken place. My clothes have rebelled
against me. Weary of scorn and neglect, they have all suddenly come
to life and they dress me by force every morning. My frockcoat leaps
upon me like a lion and hangs on, dragging me down. As I struggle my
boots trip me up--and the laces climb up my feet (never missing a
hole) like snakes or creepers. At the same moment the celebrated grey
tie springs at my throat like a wild cat.

I am told that the general effects produced by this remarkable
psychical development are superb. Really the clothes must know
best. Still it is awkward when a mackintosh pursues one down the
street. . . .

. . . There is nothing in God's earth that really ex