I had this letter framed with the other, and I waited to see what would happen, keeping back from the bank for fear of frightening the fish, and hardly breathing.
What happened was, after four or five days, a very sad letter which said that Ullmo expected better things from me, but that He knew what the stress of modern life was, and how often correspondence fell into arrears. He sent me a smaller specimen box of the Essence of The Ox. I have it still.
And there it is. There is no moral; there is no conclusion or application. The world is not quite infinite—but it is astonishingly full. All sorts of things happen in it. There are all sorts of different men and different ways of action, and different goals to which life may be directed. Why, in a little wood near home, not a hundred yards long, there will soon burst, in the spring (I wish I were there!), hundreds of thousands of leaves, and no one leaf exactly like another. At least, so the parish priest used to say, and though I have never had the leisure to put the thing to the proof, I am willing to believe that he was right, for he spoke with authority.
ON A HOUSE
I appeal loudly to the Muse of History (whose name I forget and you never knew) to help me in the description of this house, for—
The Muse of Tragedy would overstrain herself on it;
The Muse of Comedy would be impertinent upon it;
The Muse of Music never heard of it;
The Muse of Fine Arts disapproved of it;
The Muse of Public Instruction … (Tut, tut! There I was nearly making a tenth Muse! I was thinking of the French Ministry.)