On Anything Book

ONE day in the town of Perpignan I was poking about to see wllere I could best get something to eat, . cvlien I saw a door open into a charnling grden and in the hope of finding it to be the garden of an inn, at any rate of seeing the garden during the process of asking whether it were an inn, I walked in, but I found everything deserted. There as a little llouse at the end wit11 everything shut against tlie blinding sun, but the mail1 door of it wide open. I walked in there too and heard no noise of men, and my curiosity took me up the stairs until I came out quite unexpectedly upoil anotl er little garden built on the flat roof of this d velling and on its sliady side. And there I saw a man sitting and looking dreamily towards tlie mountailis. - He did not ask nle how I came there, but I desired to tell hiin, for it was evidently liis roof. IVe spoke a little together until I asked him wliy he watched the mountains and why his gaze was B On Anything to vardsS pain then at great length he spoke to me, but dreamily still. Long before I knew that the speech of men was misused by them and that they lied in the hearing of the gods pei etually-in those early days through which men have passed, during which one believes what one is told, an old and crusty uToman of great vealth, to vhom I was describing what I intended to do with life which in those days seemed to me of infinite duration, said to me, You are building castles in Spain. I was too mucl in awe of this voman-not on account of the vealth, but on account of the crust-to go further into the matter, but it seemed to ine a very foolish thing to say, for I had never been to Spain, and I had notl ing vhere vitl to build a castle-and indeed sue11 a project had never passed tl rouglm y head. For many years I returned to this phrase. I heard it upon several occasions. And in those years through which a man approacl es maturity it still remained in my mind, possessing a singular fascination. Though I had found long since that phrases mean at the best something different from their words, and often something exactly opposite to them, yet this phrase kept about it sometl ing mystical and sincere and I never read of Spain nor saw x map of Spain without thinking of the castles in that land, and vondering vbetber, as that ancient sybil had prophesied to me, I should come to build there or no. 011 Building Castles in Spain It so happened that the feeling grew upon me until, in my tllirtietll year, I determined to travel in that country, and I did so, arriving at one of tlle Spanisli ports by sea and the first thing I did when I had landed was to ask in my own tongue whether tliere were any castles in the neighbourhood, and especially whether any of them mere at that moinent in process of being built...Read More