VI

escape from my thoughts of you into divining the undivinable future. For that is what gambling is. You try for a rise: you try for a fall⁠—and the rise or the fall may depend on the momentary madness of a dozen men who declare a war, or upon the rain from heaven which causes so many more stalks of wheat to arise upon so many million square inches of earth. The point is that you make yourself dependent upon caprice⁠—upon the caprice of the weather or upon the movement in the minds of men more insane than yourself.

Today I have entered upon what is the biggest gamble of my whole life. Certain men who believe in me⁠—they are not Edward Burdens, nevertheless they believe in me⁠—have proposed to me to form a corner in a certain article which is indispensable to the daily life of the City. I do not tell you what it is because you will assuredly witness the effects of this inspiration.

You will say that, when this is accomplished, it will be utterly uninteresting. And that is literally true: when it is done it will be uninteresting. But in the multiplicity of things that will have to be done before the whole thing is done⁠—in the waiting for things to take effect, in the failures perhaps more than in the successes, since the failures will imply new devising⁠—in all the meticulous thought-readings that will be necessary, the interest will lie, and in the men with whom one is brought into contact, the men with whom one struggles, the men whom one must bribe or trick.

And you will say: How can I who am to die in fourteen days embark upon an enterprise that will last many months or many years? That, I think, is very simple.

It is my protest against being called a man of action, the misconception that I have had to resent all my life. And this is a thought: not an action: a thought made up of an almost infinite number of erring calculations.