And yet it would be idle to say that I regret it.  I may wish that it had all fallen out otherwise, that things had been more comfortably arranged, that I had been allowed to dream away the days in my hermitage; but it was not to be; and I have at least learned that not thus can the end be attained.  The story of my failure cannot be told here, but I hope yet to find strength and skill to tell it.  At present I have but endeavoured to catch the texture of the pleasant days, before my visions began to fade about me.  And indeed I can say sincerely that those days were happy; but the root of the mistake was this:  I have by nature a very keen appetite for the subtle flavours of life, a sense of beauty in simple things, a relish for the absurdities and oddities as well as for the beauties and finenesses of temperament, a critical appreciation of the characteristic qualities of landscapes and buildings, a sense which finds satisfaction as well in such commonplace things as the variety of grotesque vehicles that go to compose a luggage train, or the grass-grown, scarped, water-logged excavations of a brick-field, as in the sharp rock-horns of some craggy mountain, impulsive as a frozen flame, or the soft outlines of fleecy clouds that race over a sapphire heaven.  If one is thus endowed by nature, it seems such an easy thing to seclude oneself from life, and to find endless joy in sight and hearing and critical appreciation.  Instead of mingling with the throng, marching and fighting, fearing and suffering, it seems easy to stand apart and let nature and art and life unfold itself before one in a rich panorama.  But not on such terms can life be lived.  One hopes to avoid suffering by aloofness; but there falls upon the spirit a worse sickness than the weariness of toil—­the ache of pent-up activities and self-tortured mystifications.  The soul becomes involved in a dreary metaphysic, wondering fruitlessly what it is that mars the sweet and beautiful world.  The fact is that one is purloining experience instead of paying the natural price for it, estimating things by the outside instead of from the inside, and growing thus to care more for the strangeness, the contrast, the picturesqueness of it all, than for the love and the hope and the elemental forces, of which the world is but the garb and scene.

Here in this book the mind turns from itself and its rest, when it has satisfied its first delight in creating the home, the setting, the scenery, so to speak, of the drama; turns to the men and women who cross the stage, surveys their gestures and glances, interprets their movements and silences; and then winds out into the further distance, the towns, the buildings, the roads, that stand for the designs and desires of pilgrims that have passed into the unknown country, leaving their provender for later hands to use.  But the whole book, if I may say it, is the prelude to the further scene, the silent entry of Fate, the coming of the Master to survey the servant’s work.