"Ici l'on voulut que tout fût simple, tranquille, sans ostentation d'esprit ni de science, que personne ne se crût engagé à avoir raison, et que l'on fût toujours en état de céder sans honte, surtout qu'aucun système ne dominât dans l'Académie à l'exclusion des autres, et qu'on laissât toujours toutes les portes ouvert à la vérité."

Fontenelle.

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MDCCCCVII


Copyright, 1906
By John Lane Company


CONTENTS

Page
[L'Enfant Terrible]1
[An Optimistic Cynic]7
[A Poet Sheep-rancher]10
[An Eaten Cake]13
[Concerning Elbows on the Table]16
[An Autumn Impulse]17
[John-a'-Dreams]19
[The Fountain of Salmacis]41
[Two Siegfrieds]44
[A Door Ajar]47
[At Time of Death]49
[The Curse of Babel]49
[The Fourth Dimension]52
[The Ant and the Lark]58
[The Döppelganger]63
["A Young Man's Fancy"]73
[An Arabian Looking-glass]78
[The Cry of the Women]80
[The Beauty of Cruelty]95
[The Duke of Wellington's Trees]101
[The Boy with the Goose]103
[A God Indeed]104
[A Question of Skulls]110
[The Modern Woman and Marriage]112
[The Ideal Husband]120
[A New Law of Health]126
["Dead, Dead, Dead"]139
[Verbal Magic]140
[Hamlet]143
[Ghosts]149
[Amateur Saints]153
[The Zeitgeist]159
[The Abdication of Man]187
[Life]205
[Portable Property]206
[Are American Parents Selfish?]208
[A Question of Heredity]219
[The Little Dumb Brother]220
[Fever Dreams]248
[A Misunderstood Moralist]250
[The Pleasures of Pessimism]255
[Moral Pauperism]257
[On a Certain Lack of Humour in Frenchmen]258
[The Value of a Soul]267
[A Grateful Spaniard]271
[Bores]271
[Emotions and Oxydization]273
[Abelard to Heloïse]275
[Heloïse to Abelard]277
[Yumei Mujitsu]279
[The Real Thing]284
["Oh, Eloquent, Just, and Mighty Death"]286
["Philistia, be Thou Glad of Me"]299
["Oh King, Live Forever!"]305
[The Little Room]307
[Aftermath]312