Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it. - Hugh Walpole

"So to foreign parts he went again and, loving her so dearly, wrote letters to her which he tore up without sending lest she should think him foolish - such being the British temperament

"The Staircase

No one knew where he found his treasures, for he was always in his shop, smiling and amiable, but sometimes gentlemen would come from London, and he had strange friends like Mr. Andreas Morelli, concerning whose life a book has already been written. Zachary Tan's shop became at last the word in Treliss for all that was strange and unusual — the strongest link with London and other curious places. He had a little back room behind his shop, where he would welcome his friends, give them something to drink and talk about the world. He was always so friendly that people thought that he must wish for things in return, but he never asked for anything, nor did he speak about himself at all.

But, concerning the Traveller who would enter the House of Courage there are many lands that must be passed on the road before he rest there. There is, first, the Land of Lacking All Things — that is hard to cross. There is, Secondly, the Land of Having All Things. There is the Traveller's Fortitude most hardly tested. There is, Thirdly, The Land of Losing All Those Things that One Hath Possessed. That is a hard country indeed for the memory of the pleasantness of those earlier joys redoubleth the agony of lacking them. But at the end there is a Land of ice and snow that few travellers have compassed, and that is the Land of Knowing What One Hath Missed…. The Bird was in the hand and one let it go … that is the hardest agony of all the journey … but if these lands be encountered and surpassed then doth the Traveller at length possess his soul and is master of it … this is the Meaning and Purpose of Life.