speculative eye upon his coevals—those dreary "substantial characters" who now for so many years have been giving one another the same old bite of the same old musty cheese that they are. They, too, have become intriguing little dramatic spectacles, each one with its own individual savor! And his wife and the four children? The moment that he stops worrying about that abstract line that is the shortest distance between two points, he perceives at last the full color and fragrance and taste of his relation to them.
WHAT does all this mean? It means that at forty, when a man seems hermetically enclosed in his character, an angel may just possibly unbar the door, and, leaving his possessive, aggressive body sleeping there, let his spirit out for the recognition and appreciation of a new life. So long as he wished to possess and direct the world, it erected barriers against him, and progressively shut him in. As soon as he exacts nothing of it, it gives
