brecho cheapchic

    What fools we all are to prefer the circumference to the centre. What a dreadful thing it would be if we should be suddenly ushered from this wintry world into the Maytime orchards of heaven, and if our pauperism of sin and sorrow should be suddenly broken up by a presentation of an emperor's castle surrounded by parks with springing fountains, and paths up and down which angels of God walk two and two.

    We are all like persons standing on the cold steps of the national picture gallery in London, under umbrella in the rain, afraid to go in amid the Turners and the Titians, and the Raphaels. I come to them and say: "Why don't you go inside the gallery?" "Oh," they say, "we don't know whether we can get in." I say: "Don't you see the door is open?" "Yes," they say, "but we have been so long on these cold steps, we are so attached to them we don't like to leave." "But," I say, "it is so much brighter and more beautiful in the gallery, you had better go in." "No," they say, "we know exactly how it is out here, but we don't know exactly how it is inside."

   So we stick to this world as though we preferred cold drizzle to warm habitation, discord to cantata, sack-cloth to royal purple - as though we preferred a piano with four or five of the keys out of tune to an instrument fully attuned - as though earth and heaven had exchanged apparel, and earth had taken on bridal array and heaven had gone into deep mourning, all its waters stagnant, all its harps broken, all chalices cracked at the dry wells, all the lawns sloping to the river ploughed with graves of dead angels under the furrow. Oh, I want to break up my own infatuation and I want to break up your infatuation with this world. I tell you, if we are ready, and if our work is done, the sooner we go the better, and if there are blessings in longevity I want you to know right well there are also blessings in an abbreviated earthly existence.