I laughed outright, for I couldn't help it, and she joined me. How we do like people who can laugh at themselves.
“But,” I said, “there was sound sense in a great deal that you were trying to do.”
“The fireplace smoked; and the kitchen sink froze up; and the cook left because we couldn't keep her room warm.”
“But you were right,” I interrupted, “and I am not going to be put off by smoking fireplaces or chilly cooks; you were right. We do have too much, we are smothered in things, we don't enjoy what we do have—”
I paused.
“And you were making a beautiful thing, a beautiful house.”
“The trouble with making a beautiful thing,” she replied, “is that when you have got it done you must straightway make another. Now I don't want to keep on building houses or furnishing rooms. I am not after beauty—I mean primarily—what I want is to live, live simply, live greatly.”
She was desperately in earnest.
“Perhaps,” I said, feeling as though I were treading on dangerous ground, “you were trying to be simple for the sake of being simple. I wonder if true simplicity is ever any thing but a by-product. If we aim directly for it, it eludes us: but if we are on fire with some great interest that absorbs on lives to the uttermost, we forget ourselves into simplicity, Everything falls into simple lines around us, like a worn garment.”
I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had been preachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriers between yourself and your friends: but that's a defect of character I've never been able, quite, to overcome. I keep thinking I've got the better of it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go—and come out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from Mary Starkweather's.