back upon their heels, and returns to the fold of safety and peace of mind, and reaches his goal?

Woe, all woe, to those who imagine that matter alone is the end of our contention and our scrambling, in darkness and in light, in cold and in heat... The piasters that enter our pockets by way of a salary or by way of trade are but a means of securing the morsel of bread, the roof, the light, and the garment we cover ourselves with... piasters that come and go; we take them in here to pay them out there, and nothing of them remains to us but the deep moral trace, but the golden, goodly memory.

Truly I say to you, O seeker of wisdom: in a poem a poet composes, or an essay a man of letters adorns with his pen... in a painting or a statue — even in a dress finely wrought, on which the tailor has spent notable pains —

in all of these, and in many others besides, there is a sufficiency and a recompense that all the wealth of the earth cannot equal... And your children, your portraits in miniature, your living poems — are they not the most beautiful trace that remains after you? Do the fortunes of the whole world weigh in the balance against these noble, fresh monuments, these statues pulsing with life and warmth?

The bucket's talk pleased my ear and delighted me; my soul thrilled and opened at the fall of its phrases. Perhaps it was the feeling of motherhood in me that woke and stirred to the sweet song, plaintive of melody; the noble passions and feelings answered one another within me, and my eyes brimmed over with tears for a reason whose nature I did not know. And I implored my bucket, which I had filled with a fresh gush from the

well of experience — I implored it to give me more, and to speak to me at fuller length... And it said:

It is a tiny minority among mankind that was fashioned for creation and invention, capable of setting down a legislative or liter-ary or artistic monument, and of leaving to humanity a heritage firm of pillar, one that guarantees its author some measure of glory and a sufficiency to satisfy his ambi-tion... And the rest of mankind, apart from this creative minority, are like a huge flock, massing behind a leader or a chieftain and doing his bidding. Yet this does not prevent every human being of this huge flock from having a mission clear in its aims. And all a man's works are directed, according to a particular order and a drawn plan, toward accomplishing this mission in the best way possible. And the mission of the ordinary man