Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

26o Walking Tours
home, and be happy thinking. To sit still
and contemplate, — to remember the faces of
women without desire, to be pleased by the
great deeds of men without envy, to be
everything and everywhere in sympathy, and
yet content to remain where and what you
are — is not this to know both wisdom and
virtue, and to dwell with happiness ? After
all, it is not they who carry flags, but they
who look upon it from a private chamber,
who have the fun of the procession. And
once you are at that, you are in the very
humour of all social heresy. It is no time
for shuffling, or for big, empty words. If
you ask yourself what you mean by fame,
riches, or learning, the answer is far to seek ;
and you go back into that kingdom of light
imaginations, which seem so vain in the eyes
of Philistines perspiring after wealth, and so
momentous to those who are stricken with
the disproportions of the world, and, in the
face of the gigantic stars, cannot stop to split
differences between two degrees of the infini-
tesimally small, such as a tobacco pipe or