If one man can stand 'life on the road,' so can another." And he would not allow his mind to dwell on the fact that a temperament which has become accustomed to every kind of comfort and luxury is seldom fitted to endure privation.

On he jogged steadily, and by and by began to be entertained by his own thoughts as pleasantly as a poet or romancist is entertained by the fancies which come and go in the brain with all the vividness of dramatic reality.

Yet always he found himself harking back to what he sometimes called the "incurability" of life.
Over and over again he asked himself the old eternal question: Why so much Product to end in Waste?
Why are thousands of millions of worlds, swarming with life-organisms, created to revolve in space, if there is no other fate for them but final destruction?
"There _must_ be an Afterwards!" he said.

"Otherwise Creation would not only be a senseless joke, but a wicked one! Nay, it would almost be a crime.

To cause creatures to be born into existence without their own consent, merely to destroy them utterly in a few years and make the fact of their having lived purposeless, would be worse than the dreams of madmen.