On the curl'd clouds.”
I shall know where Aunt Jane's letters are, and where my bills are,
and my cuttings about this, that, and the other, and my diaries and
notebooks, and the time-table and the street guide. I shall never be
short of a match or a spare pair of spectacles, or a pencil, or--in
short, life will henceforth be an easy amble to old age. For a week it
worked like a charm. Then the demon of disorder took possession of the
beast. It devoured everything and yielded up nothing. Into its soundless
deeps my merchandise sank to oblivion. And I seemed to sink with it.
It was not a desk, but a tomb. One day I got a man to take it away to a
second-hand shop.
Since then I have given up being tidy. I have realised that the quality
of order is not purchasable at furniture shops, is not a quality of
external things, but an indwelling spirit, a frame of mind, a habit that
perhaps may be acquired but cannot be bought.
I have a smaller desk with fewer drawers, all of them nicely choked up
with the litter of the past. Once a year I have a gaol delivery of the
incarcerated. The ghosts come out into the daylight, and I face them
unflinching and unafraid. They file past, pointing minatory fingers at
me as they go into the waste-paper basket. They file past now. But I
do not care a dump; for to-morrow I shall seek fresh woods and pastures
new. To-morrow the ghosts of that old untidy desk will have no terrors
for my emancipated spirit.
[Illustration: 0061]
[Illustration: 0062]