It's a divine morning, quiet and hot. The watercart has just gone down the road and now the piano opposite is braiding its hair in swift, intricate braids. I cannot help feeling, to-day, that the world, at any rate, is the page 206 ‘friend of man’ and longs for us to walk upon lawns and idle in gardens and wear shady hats and dabble our feet in pools, and lie in grass and lose ourselves in forests and watch the light and the air shaking tall trees….

Oh—these misunderstandings! great ones and little ones—do let us drive them all into the sea. Why do we allow them to rush at us and snap and hurt us all so horribly? God knows we have all of us had reason enough to suspect and to mistrust … but “is it too late?”