x
he says to me, waving his hand toward the view. But I don't have leisure to answer him, for that is the time when I am hurrying to catch the 5:27 train.
Of course he can be very annoying. It is maddening to hear him contradict and ridicule the compromises and precious makeshifts which we build for self-respect. I tell him that he is an irresponsible doctrinaire: he has never had to earn a living, to carry on a daily job, or concern himself with anything but pure rationalism. Also, he has the foreigner's awkward way of taking our idiom literally. I said to him once, trying to explain a dilemma in which I found myself, "I am between the Devil and the Deep Sea." He smiled that provoking, sallow, tilt-eyed smile of his. "Surely your choice is easy," he said, "for you pretend to be fond of the Sea." I have tried, in this small book, to translate more or less accurately some of his disturbing comments; but there are many more that I have not been able to render intelligible. His dialect is often of a sort not found in the glossaries within my reach; and his principles of judgment are so opposite to those on which most of us establish our daily conduct that, as I have told him, I should need a contradictionary to interpret him properly.
So I may, here and there, have made him responsible for sentiments and implications that are my own rather than his. I wish I could tell you how strangely wise and happy he seems, in those rare moments when I am able to give ear to him. In spite of his skepticisms, he apparently sees so much more meaning in
