Page:A Modern Symposium - Dickinson - 1913.djvu/137

 a-piece, as we mean to. And your education was rhetorical, and your philosophy absurd, and your vices—oh, unmentionable! No, no, young men! Not for us, thank you!' And so they stalk on, don't you see them, with their rational costume, and their rational minds, and their hard little hearts, and the empty place where their imagination ought to be! Dreadful, dreadful! Or perhaps they go, say, to Assisi, and Saint Francis comes to talk to them. And 'Look,' he says, 'what a beautiful world, if you'd only get rid of your encumbrances! Money, houses, clothes, food, it's all so much obstruction! Come and see the real thing; come and live with the life of the soul; burn like a flame, blossom like a flower, flow like a mountain stream!' 'My dear sir,' they reply, 'you're unclean, impudent and ignorant! Moreover you're encouraging mendicancy and superstition. Not to-day, thank you!' And off they go to the Charity Organisation Committee. It's—it's——" He pulled himself up again, and then went on more quietly. "Well, one oughtn't to get angry, and I dare say I'm misrepresenting everybody. Besides, I haven't said exactly what I wanted to say. I