O Art has become foolishly IT is the prime secret of the Open confounded with education that all should be equally qualified s Whereas, while polish,refinement, culture and breeding are in no way arguments for artistic results, it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely without eye for painting or ear for music that in his heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rembrandt's needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven's C minor symphony. Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the admission a proof of inferiority. Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence can not bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce. This is as it should be-and all attempts to make it otherwise are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the zeal of the conceited.-Whistler. IT is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another. The moment that we have something to say to each other, we are compelled to hold our peace: and if at such times we do not listen to the urgent commands of silence, invisible though they be, we shall have suffered an eternal loss that all the treasures of human wisdom can not make good; for we shall have let slip the opportunity of listening to another soul, and of giving existence, be it only for an instant, to our own. And again, I doubt whether anything in the world can beautify a soul more spontaneously, more naturally, than the knowledge that somewhere in its neighborhood exists a pure and noble being whom it can unreservedly love. When the soul has veritably drawn near to such a being, beauty is no longer a lovely, lifeless thing that one exhibits to the stranger, for it suddenly takes unto itself an imperious existence, and its activity becomes so natural as to be henceforth irresistible.-Maeterlinck. Road that you are to pass nothing, reject nothing, despise nothing upon this earth. As you travel, many things both great and small will come to your attention; you are to regard all with open eyes and a heart of simplicity. Believe that everything belongs somewhere; each thing has its fitting and luminous place within this mosaic of human life. The Road is not open to those who withdraw the skirts of intolerance or lift the chin of pride. Rejecting the least of those who are called common or unclean, it is (curiously) you yourself that you reject If you despise that which is ugly you do not know that which is beautiful. -David Grayson. N its heart the world cares for little but play; but in its life it does hardly anything but work, for the world has forgotten that the reason of its work isplay. The natural man works that he may play-works that he may love and dream, and know while he may the wonders and joys of the strange and lovely world which for a short space he is allowed to inhabit; the unnatural man plays that he may work. So unnatural indeed have we become that not only have we forgotten our dreams, but we have actually grown ashamed of them. Proverbially there is nothing of which an Englishman is so much ashamed as his emotions. To suspect him of sentiment is to imply insult, to surprise him in tears is to commit a mortal offense. Laughter he still retains, but too often for the unworthy purpose of laughing at other people's emotions, and ridiculing beautiful things he no longer understands. England indeed is the Siberia of emotions. Let us all escape from Siberia. -Richard Le Gallienne. HE law should be loved a little be cause it is felt to be just; feared a little because it is severe; hated a little because it is to a certain degree out of sympathy with the prevalent temper of the day; and respected because it is felt to be a necessity.-Emile Fourget. fruit-trees begin to show; the blood is HE love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he paysanotherto dig) is as sure to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to gounder the ground and stay there. To owna bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch their renewal of life-this The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one, Yet the light of the bright world With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one, -Francis W. Bourdillon is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero writes of the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is chief among them To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure should be taken sparingly-is a great thing. One gets strength out of the ground as often as one touches it with a hoe. Antæus was no doubt an agriculturist; and such a prize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he got him to lay down his spade and quit the soil. It is not simply potatoes and beets and corn and cucumbers that one raises in his well-hoed garden; it is the average of human life. There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends to his shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on the bushes round about; the blossoms of the sounds. Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting O Blessed be agriculture!-if one does not have too much of it. All literature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot of the charming, olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, who did landscape-gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did not get half as much comfort from it as Horace did from his more simply tilled acres. We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farming himself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. In order to enjoy agriculture you do not want too much of it, and you want to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moderately yourself. Hoe while it is Spring and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well. -Charles Dudley Warner. have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life se We have preached Brotherhood for -Edwin Markham. those odd moments? Thomas A. Edison, for instance, was hammering away at a telegraph-key when he was telegraph-operator on a small salary. He did n't neglect the by-product, the odd moments. He thought, and planned, and tried between messages. And he worked out, as a by-product of his telegraph job, all the inventions that And this I hate-not men, nor flag nor race, But only War with its wild, grinning face. N these days, much of the profit and sometimes the whole of success depend upon utilizing the odds and ends, the so-called "by-products." The by-product is something apart from the main article manufactured, and yet something that has an actual value of its own. For instance, in the manufacture of gas there are many byproducts; these are obtained from the coal as the latter is made into lightinggas. And these byproducts, including the coke from the coal, actually suffice to pay the cost of the gas. All kinds of big businesses have their by-products, their little odds and ends that pay well. In Mr. Armour's enormous meat God strike it till its eyes be blind as night, And all its members tremble with affright! Oh, let it hear in its death agony The wail of mothers for their bestloved ones, And on its head Descend the venomed curses of its sons Who followed her, deluded, where its guns Had dyed the daisies red. (Concluded on next page) factory, for instance, there are endless by-products, from the pigtails which are dried and sold as a delicacy, to the hair of animals made into a powerful, valuable kind of rope. If Mr. Armour neglected making the hair rope, or selling the pigtails, it would make a big difference in his dividends se The point for the reader is this: The individual man does not manufacture, as a rule. But we are, all of us, dealers in time Ꮽ ᏭO Time is the one thing we possess. Our success depends upon the use of our time, and its by-product, the odd moment do Each of us has a regular day's work that he does in a routine, more or less mechanical, way. He does his clerking, his writing, his typewriting, or whatever it may be, so many hours per day. And that ends it. But what about the by-product, the odd moments? Do you know that the men that have made great successes in this world are the men that have used wisely have given him. millions, and given to the inhabitants of the world thousands of millions' worth of dollars in new ideas. Benjamin Franklin in his story of his life shows an endless number of such efforts along the lines using the odd moments. In a hundred different ways he managed to make the extra hours useful and productive. What a man does in his odd moments is not only apt to bring him profit; it is apt also to increase his mental activity The mind craves a change, and it often does well the unusual thing, out of the routines do 66 "Letting well enough alone" is a foolish motto in the life of a man who wants to get ahead. In the first place, nothing is well enough," if you can do better s No matter how well you are doing, do better. There is an old Spanish proverb which says, Enjoy the little you have while the fool is hunting for more.' The energetic American ought to turn this proverb upside down and make it read, While the fool is enjoying the little he has, I will hunt for more." The way to hunt for more is to utilize your odd moments. Every minute that you save by making it useful, more profitable, is so much added to your life and its possibilities. Every minute lost is a neglected byproduct-once gone, you will never get it back. Think of the odd quarter of an hour in the morning before breakfast, the odd half-hour after breakfast, remember the chance to read, or figure, or think with concentration on your own career, that comes now and again in the day. All of these opportunities are the by-products of your daily existence. leading theology. Do not feed children on a maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them Nature. Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet. Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings. If they come into the world with souls groping in darkness, let them see and feel the light. Do not terrify them in early life with the fear of an afterworld. Never was a All these I hate-war and its panoply, The toil of peasants through the burdened years, The legacy of long disease that preys Use them, and you may find what many Until it shrivel with its votaries That nevermore Its dreadful call of murder may be heard; From blood-drenched shore to shore! HAT is the good of prescribing to art the roads that it must follow s To do so is to doubt art, which develops normally according to the laws of Nature, and must be exclusively occupied in responding to human needs. Art has always shown itself faithful to Nature, and has marched with social progress. The ideal of beauty can not perish in a healthy society; we must then give liberty to art, and leave her to herself. Have confidence in her; she will reach her end, and if she strays from the way she will soon reach it again; society itself will be the guide. No single artist, not Shakespeare himself, can prescribe to art her roads and aims.-Dostoievski. child made more noble and good by a fear of Hell s Let Nature teach them the lessons of good and proper living, combined with an abundance of well-balanced nourishment. Those children will grow to be the best men and women. Put the best in them by contact with the best outside. They will absorb it as a plant absorbs the sunshine and the dew. -Luther Burbank. BOVE the indistinguishable roar of the many feet I feel the presence of the sun, of the immense forces of the universe, and beyond these the sense of the eternal now, of the immortal. Full aware that all has failed, yet, side by side with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to be found, something real, something to give each separate personality sunshine and flowers in its own existence now. Something to shape this million-handed labor to an end and outcome, leaving accumulated sunshine and flowers to those who shall succeed. It must be dragged forth by might of thought from the immense forces of the universe.-Richard Jeffries. There is a chord in every heart that has a sigh in it if touched aright.-Ouida. HERE is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder goes his round. It is fascinating to watch them, the new-born, the next generation, swaying and stepping, with pretty little mimicries and graceful inventions all their own, with muscles that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that leap airily, weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school. I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere, and they struck me as being bright as other children, and in many ways even brighter. They have most active little imaginations. Their capacity for projecting themselves into the realm of romance and fantasy is remarkable. A joyous life is romping in their blood. They delight in music, and motion, and color, and very often they betray a startling beauty of face and form under their filth and rags. But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all away. They disappear. One never sees them again, or anything that suggests them. You may look for them in vain among the generation of grown-ups. Here you will find stunted forms, ugly faces, and blunt and stolid minds. Grace, beauty, imagination, all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are gone. Sometimes, however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but twisted and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift her draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering steps upon the pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of those children who danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque and lumbering steps are all that is left of the promise of childhood. In the befogged recesses of her brain has arisen a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The crowd closes in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than parody with her body. Then she pants for breath, exhausted, and stumbles out through the circle. But the little girls dance on. The children of the Ghetto possess all the qualities which make for noble manhood and womanhood; but the Ghetto itself, like an infuriated tigress turning on its young, turns upon and destroys all these qualities, blots out the light and laughter, and moulds those it does not kill into sodden and forlorn creatures, uncouth, degraded, and wretched below the beasts of the field.-Jack London. W HEN we succeed in adjusting our social structure in such a way as to enable us to solve social questions as fast as they become really pressing, they will no longer force their way into the theater. Had Ibsen, for instance, had any reason to believe that the abuses to which he called attention in his prose plays would have been adequately attended to without his interference, he would no doubt have gladly left them alone. The same exigency drove William Morris in England from his tapestries, his epics, and his masterpieces of printing, to try and bring his fellow-citizens to their senses by the summary process of shouting at them in the streets and in Trafalgar Square. John Ruskin's writing began with Modern Painters, Carlyle began with literary studies of German culture and the like; both were driven to become revolutionary pamphleteers. If people are rotting and starving in all directions, and nobody else has the heart or brains to make a disturbance about it, the great writers must. -George Bernard Shaw. VERY one now believes that there is in a man an animating, ruling, characteristic essence, or spirit, which is himself. This spirit, dull or bright, petty or grand, pure or foul, looks out of the eyes, sounds in the voice, and appears in the manners of each individual. It is what we call personality. -Chas. W. Eliot. Sleep hath its own world, a boundary between the things misnamed death and existence.-Byron. Reason is the life of the law.-Coke. |
