Heart, wilt thou toss again? By just such a hazard hundred have lost, indeed, but tens have won an all. Angels’ breathless ballot lingers to record thee; imps in eager caucus raffle for raffle for my heart. This so much joy! This is so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I have ventured all upon a throw; have gained! Yes! Hesitated so this side the victory! Life is but life, and death, but death! Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath! And if, indeed, I fail, at least to know the worst is sweet. Defeat means nothing but defeat, no drearier can prevail! And if I gain, –oh, sun at sea, oh, bells that in the steeples be, at first repeat it slow! For Heaven is a different thing conjectured, and waked sudden in, and might overwhelm me so!

Let virtue be dressed in smiles. To have virtue means that one has general moral excellence, a specific moral quality regarded as good; chastity. I am well aware that in setting forth, here and elsewhere, the claims of Love and Virtue, as I conceive them, it will seem to many that I carry them to the point of extravagance and make demands that are at present impossible. However, anyone who realizes that in every ancient and firmly established social order the forces of inertia are of immense weight will realize also that we cannot strike too hard or make our demands too large. In such an impermeable World, we can only gain much by having asked more. To do so is the only course open to individuals of reason and moderation, who are pioneering the future.

This is life. Even if I sometimes dream, I do not dream beyond the circumference of life, and the aptitudes of the human organism. I do not have a soul, so I went to Popeye’s to get some soul food, in hopes of establishing one. Dreams are the gifts of the saints. Dreams are so wonderful that some people stop short of ascribing them directly to Heaven. A little trance of astonishment. Glee! The great storm is over! Four have recovered the land; forty gone down together into boiling sand. Ring, for the scant salvation! Toll, for the Phillippe souls,–neighbor and friend and groom, spinning upon the shores! How they will tell the Albatross shipwreck when Winter shakes the door, till the children ask, but the forty? Did they come back no more?

Then a silence suffuses the story, and a softness the teller’s eye; and the children no further question, and only the waves of the White Squall reply. If I can stop your heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; if I can ease your life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. When, indeed, I come to think of it, that may be the reason why my dreams are at first regarded as shocking and afterwards as a commonplace. They are within the orbit of life, even though they seem to present some new vision of life. Tell me what an individual dreams, I will tell you what that one loves.