Trivia | Page 2

from his window opposite, is the scene of
a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the
country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always
expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical
Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What
it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but
I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table,
open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself "Here it is!" when
at night I hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the
hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest or
ambition, I live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live
perhaps until the end. Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and
revelation for which I am waiting? I do not know.

The Busy Bees
Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near the
garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those
honey-merchants--sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with their
minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the late sun to their
night-long labours-I have sought instruction from the Bees, and tried to
appropriate to myself the old industrious lesson.
And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teachers and who the
learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was there no
lesson to be derived from the spectacle of Me? Gazing out at me with
myriad eyes from their joyless factories, might they not learn at
last--might I not finally teach them--a wiser and more generous-hearted
way to improve the shining hour?

The Wheat
The Vicar, whom I met once or twice in my walks about the fields, told
me that he was glad that I was taking an interest in farming. Only my
feeling about wheat, he said, puzzled him.
Now the feeling in regard to wheat which I had not been able to make

clear to the Vicar was simply one of amazement. Walking one day into
a field that I had watched yellowing beyond the trees, I found myself
dazzled by the glow and great expanse of gold. I bathed myself in the
intense yellow under the intense blue sky; how dim it made the oak
trees and copses and all the rest of the English landscape seem! I had
not remembered the glory of the Wheat; nor imagined in my reading
that in a country so far from the Sun there could be anything so rich, so
prodigal, so reckless, as this opulence of ruddy gold, bursting out from
the cracked earth as from some fiery vein below. I remembered how for
thousands of years Wheat had been the staple of wealth, the hoarded
wealth of famous cities and empires; I thought of the processes of
corn-growing, the white oxen ploughing, the great barns, the
winnowing fans, the mills with the splash of their wheels, or arms
slow-turning in the wind; of cornfields at harvest-time, with shocks and
sheaves in the glow of sunset, or under the sickle moon; what beauty it
brought into the northern landscape, the antique, passionate, Biblical
beauty of the South!

The Coming of Fate
When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had their
beginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments that shine for
me curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that made me take this
turning at the crossroads, trivial and fortuitous the meeting, and light as
gossamer the thread that first knit me to my friend. These are full of
wonder; more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me
with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I did not
see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the threshold; but the
word was not spoken, the hand was not held out, and the
Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim as a into the waste realms
of non-existence.
So I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of daily
life, with its meetings and words and accidents. Why, to-day, perhaps,
or next week, I may hear a voice, and, packing up my Gladstone bag,
follow it to the ends of the world.

My Speech

"Ladies and Gentlemen," I began--The Vicar was in the chair; Mrs. La
Mountain and her daughters sat facing us; and in the little schoolroom,
with its maps and large Scripture prints, its blackboard with the day's
sums still visible on it, were assembled the labourers of the village, the
old family coachman and his wife, the one-eyed postman, and the
gardeners