Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/306

 well instructed by it, as all may be who approach it thus, above a trivial lust for winning.

Two of us played in that provocative June. One was myself, alert for auspicious falls of the cards, yet stoical and undepressed when a deal promising to be almost too easy for interest was suddenly blocked by some trifling card. Thus was I schooled to expectations of a wise shallowness, not so deep but that they might be overrun by the moderate flow of human happiness. Thus one learned to expect little under much wanting, and to find his most certain profit in observing the freshness of those devices which left him frustrate. Jim, the other player of us, chased gluttonous robins on the lawn, ever with an indifferent success, but with as undimmed a faith, as fatuous a certainty, as the earliest of gods could have wished to see. And between us we achieved a conviction that the greater game is worth playing, even when one has discovered its terrific percentage of failures.

I was not unpleased to be alone during this period of discipline when my soul was perforce purged of its troublesome ferments. It was well that my neighbor should have gone where she might distract me never so little.

For it was at the season when Nature brews the irresistible philter. Always, I resolved to forego it like a man; always, like a man, I was overborne by the ancient longing, the formless "heimweh" that haunts the hearts of the unmated, and which in my own case made short work of stoic resolutions. And,