Part 11 (1/2)

Lets not get confused

Im not confused, said Jonathan.

Well, I shall be in a minute if I dont look out. You cant follow a parallel too far. What I mean is, that if you run away from one kind of complexity you run into another kind.

What are you going to do about it?

Im going to like it all, I answered, and make believe I meant to do it.

After that we were silent awhile. Then I tried again. You know your trick of waltzing with a gla.s.s of water on your head?

Yes.

Well, I wonder if we couldnt do that with our souls.

That suggests to me a rather curious picture, said Jonathan.

Wellyou know what I mean. When you do that, your body takes up all the jolts and jiggles before they get to the top of your head, so the gla.s.s stays quiet.

Well

Well, I dont see whyonly, of course, our souls arent really anything like gla.s.ses of water, and it would be perfectly detestable to think of carrying them around carefully like that.

Perhaps youd better back out of that figure of speech, suggested Jonathan. Go back to your princess. Say, every man his own mattress.

No. Any figure is wrong. The trouble with all of them is that as soon as you use one it begins to get in your way, and say all sorts of things for you that you never meant at all. And then if you notice it, it bothers you, and if you dont notice it, you get drawn into crooked thinking.

And yet you cant think without them.

No, you cant think without them.

Wellwhere are we, anyway? he asked placidly.

I dont know at all. Only I feel sure that leading the simple life doesnt depend on the things you do it _with_. Feeding your own cows and pigs and using pumps and candles brings you no nearer to it than marketing by telephone and using city water supply and electric lighting. I dont know what does bring you nearer, but Im sure it must be something inside you.

That sounds rather reasonable, said Jonathan; almost scriptural

Yes, I know, I said.

IV

After Frost

It is late afternoon in mid-September. I stand in my garden sniffing the raw air, and wondering, as always at this season, _will_ there be frost to-night or will there not? Of course if I were a woodchuck or a muskrat, or any other really intelligent creature, I should know at once and act accordingly, but being only a stupid human being, I am thrown back on conjecture, a.s.sisted by the thermometer, and an appeal to Jonathan.

Too much wind for frost, says he.

Sure? Id hate to lose my nasturtiums quite so early.