Wiser were the
ascetics whom I used to scorn; they made themselves ascetics of the
body, but I have been an ascetic of the soul."
* * * * *
"_Eccola!_" I said, "was it like that? But a heady rhetoric is not
inconsistent with sobriety of thought, as many a Victorian page we have
read together testifies. The style tames with the spirit; and wild blood
is not the worst of faults in poets or boys. But I will change old coin
for the new mintage with you, if you like, and it is not so very
different. There is a good stretch ahead, and the ponies never seem to
misbehave both at once." In fact, these ponies, who seemed to enjoy the
broad, open world with us, had yet to learn the first lesson of
civilization, and unite their private wills in rebellion; for, while one
or the other of them would from time to time fling back his heels and
prepare to resist, the other dragged him into the course with the steady
pace, and, under hand and voice, they kept going in a much less
adventurous way than I had anticipated. And so I read a page or two from
the small blank-book in which I used to write, saying only, by way of
preface, that the April morning my friend so well remembered marked the
time when I began that direct appeal to life of which these notes were
the first-fruits.
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