And life looks impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware of
the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. It would be for their peace to
learn that there is a tide in the affairs of men, in a sense more
subtle--if it is not too audacious to add a meaning to Shakespeare--than
the phrase was meant to contain. Their joy is flying away from them on
its way home; their life will wax and wane; and if they would be wise,
they must wake and rest in its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the
law that commands all things--a sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs
of maternity.
DECIVILISED
The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with
decivilised man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity--sparing
him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge of
barbarism. Especially from new soil--transatlantic, colonial--he faces
you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded of his
own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches
and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature
and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society.
He is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own
artless slang.
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