Che vedrai non capere in questi giri,
S'essere in caritate è qui necesse,
E se la sua natura ben rimiri;
Anzi è formale ad esto beato esse
Tenersi dentro alia divina voglia,
Perch'una fansi nostre voglie stesse.
Si che, come noi siam di soglia in soglia
Per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace,
Com'allo re, che in suo voler ne invoglia.
E la sua volontade è nostra pace:
Ella è quel mare al qual tutto si muove
Cio ch' ella crea o che natura face."[3]
And then, with a leap, I was back to what we call reality—to the clicking needle, to the corner in wheat, to Chicago and Pittsburg and New York. In all this continent, I thought, in all the western world, there is not a human soul whose will seeks any peace at all, least of all the peace of God. All move, but about no centre; they move on, to more power, to more wealth, to more motion. There is not one of them who conceives that he has a place, if only he could find it, a rank and order fitted to his nature, higher than some, lower than others, but right, and the only right for him, his true position in the cosmic scheme, his ultimate relation to the Power whence it proceeds. Life, like astronomy, has become Copernican. It has no centre, no significance, or, if any, one beyond our ken. Gravitation drives us, not love. We are attracted and repelled by a force we cannot control, a force that resides in our muscles and our nerves, not in our will and spirit. "Click—click—click—tick—tick—tick," so goes the economic clock. And that clock, with its silly face, has shut us out from the stars. It tells us the time; but behind the dial of the hours is now for us no vision of the solemn wheeling spheres, of spirit flames and that ultimate point of light "pinnacled dim in the intense inane." "America is a clock," I said; and then I remembered the phrase, "America is Niagara." And like a flake of foam, dizzy and lost, I was swept away, out into the infinite, out into unconsciousness.
The sun was shining brightly when I woke, and I had slept away my mood of the night. I took leave of my host, and under his directions, after half a mile along the line, plunged down into a gorge, and followed for miles, crossing and re-crossing, a mountain brook, between cliffs of red rocks, by fields of mauve anemones, in the shadow and fragrance of pines; till suddenly, after hours of rough going, I was confronted by a notice, set up, apparently, in the desert:
"Keep out. Avoid trouble. This means you."
I laughed. "Keep out!" I said. "If only there were a chance of my getting in!" "Avoid trouble! Ah, what trouble would I not face, could I but get in!" And I went on, but not in, and met no trouble, and returned to the hotel, and had dinner, and watched for a solitary hour, in the hall, the shifting interminable array of vacant eyes and blank faces, and then retired to write this letter; "and so to bed."
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