I wonder if that phrase—he who runs may read—has not a deeper significance than lies upon the surface. Perhaps the prophet—was it Habakkuk who wrote the line?—it does not matter—perhaps the bearded prophet had himself the sleepy habit, and kept moving briskly for remedy around his study. I can see him in dressing-gown and slippers, with book in hand—his whiskers veering in the wind—quickening his lively pace around the kerosene lamp, steering among the chairs, stumbling across the cat—
In ambition I am a night-hawk. I would like to sit late with old books and reconstruct the forgotten world at midnight. These bells that I hear now across the darkness are the mad bells of Saint Bartholomew. With that distant whistle—a train on the B. & O.—Guy Fawkes gathers his villains to light the fuse. Through my window from the night I hear the sounds of far-off wars and kingdoms falling.
And I would like, also, at least in theory, to sit with a merry company of friends, and let the cannikin clink till dawn.
I would like to walk the streets of our crowded city and marvel at the windows—to speculate on the thousand dramas that weave their webs in our common life. Here is mirth that shakes its sides when its neighbors sleep. Here is a hungry student whose ambition builds him rosy castles. Here is a light at a fevered pillow where hope burns dim.
On some fairy night I would wish to wander in the woods, when there are dancing shadows and a moon. Here Oberon holds state. Here Titania sleeps. I would cross a silver upland. I would stand on a barren hill-top, like the skipper of the world in its whirling voyage.
But these high accomplishments are beyond me. Habakkuk and the fat boy, and Alice and Pepys and I, and all the others, must be content. Even the wet wood and the poker fail. The very wind grows sleepy at the window. Our chins fall forward. Our books slip off our knees.
And now, at last, our buoyant bed floats among the stars. I have cast off the moorings of the sluggish world. Earth's harbor lights are at the stern. The Pleiades mark the channel to the moon—
Poof! Sleep draws again its dark curtain across the glittering pageant.
Who Was Jeremy?
WHO was Jeremy Bentham? I have run on his name recently two or three times. I could, of course, find out. The Encyclopedia—volume Aus to Bis—would enlighten me. Right now, downstairs in the bookcase—up near the top where the shabby books are kept—among the old Baedekers—there is a life of him by Leslie Stephen. No! That is a life of Hobbes. I don't know anything about Hobbes either. It seems to me that he wrote the "Leviathan," whatever that was. But there is a Bentham somewhere around the house. But I have not read it.