Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/21

A Puritan Bohemia walks by river-bank or bridge, long discussions by tea-table or by fireplace. For the hardship there is compensation. Here the ideal has become real. One may hear the Bohemians condemning, over a luncheon of coffee and rolls, the ascetic idea, and expressing belief in controlled Epicureanism. Bread and cheese for the body's diet; Transcendentalism for the mind: muddy crossings for the feet; for the soul, the paths among the stars.

The charm of evanescence belongs to this life. Work and friends are doubly dear when every morning brings the thought that they may vanish. For the mortality is great in Bohemia. It lies hard by the borderland of life, life with its ordered sequences of birth and death, of marrying and giving in marriage, of family happenings. A constant fear walks with one that one's friend may at any moment be drawn to that bourne whence none return to Bohemia.

The charm of the unexpected belongs to it. Who knows what choice spirit may