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It is well for a man to be frugal, to abstain from luxury, to possess no treasure nor to covet this world’s goods. Since olden times there has rarely been a sage who was wealthy.
In China there was once a man called Hsü Yu. He had not a single possession in the world. He even scooped up water with his hands, until a friend gave him a gourd. But one day, when he had hung it from a branch, it rattled in the wind; whereupon, disturbed by the noise, he threw it away and once more took to drinking from his clasped hands. How pure and free the heart of such a man.
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A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.
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Though the breeze blow not, the flower of the heart of man will change its hue. Now looking back on months and years of intimacy, to feel that your friend, while you still remember the moving words you exchanged, is yet growing distant and living in a world apart—all this is sadder far than partings brought by death.
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In hours of quiet thought one cannot but be overcome by longing for the past.
When, to while away the long nights after folk have gone to rest, we go through our odd belongings, sometimes, as we throw away such scraps of paper as we do not want to keep, the handwriting of one who is no more, or an idle sketch maybe, will catch the eye and vividly recall the moment it was made.
It is affecting, too, after the lapse of many years, to come across the letters even of one who is still living, and to call to mind the year and the occasion when they were written.
