he above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have found that a task willed in some hour of insight can not be fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will? Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memor
Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness of action, your more observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead of the former drawling utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened enthusiasm and enjoyment of life--all of these are but manifestations of a quickened intelligence.
[Sidenote: Quickened Mentality]
They are the working out through the motor paths of mental impulses to muscular action.
And these impulses to muscular action come thronging into consciousness because the livelier environment brings about a more rapid reproduction of memory pictures.
And here comes a particularly striking fact. One would naturally suppose that the more energy a man consumed, and the faster he lived, the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted and the shorter his life would be.
As a matter of fact, by the divine beneficence of Providence, your organism is so ordered as to adapt itself within certain wide limits to the demands made upon it
g to Gavrillac on a November morning, laden with news of thepolitical storms which were then gathering over France, Philippefound in that sleepy Breton village matter to quicken his alreadylively indignation. A peasant of Gavrillac, named Mabey, had beenshot dead that morning in the woods of Meupont, across the river,by a gamekeeper of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. The unfortunatefellow had been caught in the act of taking a pheasant from a snare,and the gamekeeper had acted under explicit orders from his master.
Infuriated by an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. deVilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabeywas a vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord ofGavrillac to demand at least some measure of reparation for thewidow and the three orphans which that brutal deed had made.
But because Andre-Louis was Philippe's dearest friend - indeed, hisalmost brother - the young seminarist sought him out in the firstinstance. He found him at break
e terror, and she burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
"Charley," she shouted, "here's Eliza misbehaving again."
"I'll settle her," answered a masculine voice, and the young man dashed into the room. He had a brown horse-cloth in his hand, which he threw over the basket, making it fast with a piece of twine so as to effectually imprison its inmate, while his aunt ran across to reassure her visitors.
"It is only a rock snake," she explained.
"Oh, Bertha!" "Oh, Monica!" gasped the poor exhausted gentlewomen.
"She's hatching out some eggs. That is why we have the fire. Eliza always does better when she is warm. She is a sweet, gentle creature, but no doubt she thought that you had designs upon her eggs. I suppose that you did not touch any of them?"
"Oh, let us get away, Bertha!" cried Monica, with her thin, black-gloved hands thrown forwards in abhorrence.
"Not away, but into the next room," said Mrs. Westmacott, with the air of one whose word was law. "This way,
way of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles,while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth inthe essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aimto expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, byshowing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special studies,how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures, music, andliterature.
The whole field of beauty is thus brought under discussion;and therefore, though it nowhere seeks to be exhaustive intreatment, the book may fairly claim to be a more or lessconsistent and complete aesthetic theory, and hence toaddress itself to the student of aesthetics as well as to thegeneral reader. The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed,will doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical, andshould be omitted by all who definitely object to professionalphraseology. The general conclusions of the book aresufficiently stated in the less abstract papers.
Of the essays which compose the following volume, the f
n high school. Jeff confides in me; I'm an older-brother figure. The death was an accident; Jeff and his friend were launching a model rocket. But deep down, Jeff thinks it was his fault. And ever since then, he's been wanting to find a way to bring reality under control. That's what the nants are really for. Making a virtual world. Not for medicine."
"So there's no cure?" said Nektar. "I babysit Chu for the rest of my life?" Though Chu could be sweet, he could also be difficult. Hardly an hour went by without a fierce tantrum--and half the time Nektar didn't even know why. "I want my career back, Ond."
Nektar had majored in media studies at UCLA, where she and Ond met. Before marrying Ond, she'd been in a relationship with a woman, but they fought about money a lot, and she'd mistakenly imagined life with a man would be easier. When Ond moved them to San Francisco for his Nantel job, Nektar had worked for the SF symphony, helping to organize benefit banquets and cocktail parties. In the process
all the extravagant luxuries of modern civilized life, on whom the discoveries of that first day of sun and wind in the Channel must have come with the greatest surprise. They had heard the ship described as a floating hotel; but as they began to explore her they must have found that she contained resources of a perfection unattained by any hotel, and luxuries of a kind unknown in palaces. The beauties of French chateaux and of English country-houses of the great period had been dexterously combined with that supreme form of comfort which the modern English and Americans have raised to the dignity of a fine art. Such a palace as a great artist, a great epicure, a great poet and the most spoilt and pampered woman in the world might have conjured up from their imagination in an idle hour was here materialized and set, not in a fixed landscape of park and woodland, but on the dustless road of the sea, with the sunshine of an English April pouring in on every side, and the fresh salt airs of the Channel filling
el path.
"Who on earth are you?" he gasped, trembling violently.
"I am Major Brown," said that individual, who was always cool in the hour of action.
The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous fish. At last he stammered wildly, "Come down--come down here!"
"At your service," said the Major, and alighted at a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.
The old man turned his broad back and set off at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the Major. His guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy, but gorgeously appointed house, until they reached the door of the front room. Then the old man turned with a face of apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.
"For heaven's sake," he said, "don't mention jackals."
Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst of red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter.
The Major stepped into a rich, glowing room, full of red copper, and peacock
s axis would tear it into a thousand fragments.
The old Norseman also maintained that from the farthest points of land on the islands of Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, flocks of geese may be seen annually flying still farther northward, just as the sailors and explorers record in their log-books. No scientist has yet been audacious enough to attempt to explain, even to his own satisfaction, toward what lands these winged fowls are guided by their subtle instinct. However, Olaf Jansen has given us a most reasonable explanation.
The presence of the open sea in the Northland is also explained. Olaf Jansen claims that the northern aperture, intake or hole, so to speak, is about fourteen hundred miles across. In connection with this, let us read what Explorer Nansen writes, on page 288 of his book: "I have never had such a splendid sail. On to the north, steadily north, with a good wind, as fast as steam and sail can take us, an open sea mile after mile, watch after watch, through these unknown re
precious the Saviour's promise, 'If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that you shall ask, it shall be done for you of my Father which is in heaven'!"
"Yes, mother dear," assented Mrs. Leland, "and we will claim and plead it for our poor dear Laura, and for Eva, that she may be sustained under the bereavement which awaits her."
"Yes," said Dr. Conly, "and there are many of our friends who will be ready to join us in the petition. I am going now to Woodburn--the captain having telephoned me that one of the servants is ill--and we all know that he and his will be full of sympathy for Eva and her sick mother."
"No doubt they will," said Grandma Elsie, "both as Christians and as warm friends of Evelyn. And it will be quite the same with our other friends."
With that the doctor bade good-morning and took his departure in the direction of Woodburn. The family there were surprised and interested by the news he had to tell of the arrival at Fairview, and of Laura's feebl
he above lines from Matthew Arnold are quoted by one of my very numerous correspondents to support a certain optimism in this matter of a systematic attempt to improve the mind. They form part of a beautiful and inspiring poem, but I gravely fear that they run counter to the vast mass of earthly experience. More often than not I have found that a task willed in some hour of insight can not be fulfilled through hours of gloom. No, no, and no! To will is easy: it needs but the momentary bright contagion of a stronger spirit than one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening, through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will? Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memor
Your quickened step, your new-found decisiveness of action, your more observant eye, your clear-cut speech instead of the former drawling utterance, your livelier manner, your freshened enthusiasm and enjoyment of life--all of these are but manifestations of a quickened intelligence.
[Sidenote: Quickened Mentality]
They are the working out through the motor paths of mental impulses to muscular action.
And these impulses to muscular action come thronging into consciousness because the livelier environment brings about a more rapid reproduction of memory pictures.
And here comes a particularly striking fact. One would naturally suppose that the more energy a man consumed, and the faster he lived, the more quickly his vitality would be exhausted and the shorter his life would be.
As a matter of fact, by the divine beneficence of Providence, your organism is so ordered as to adapt itself within certain wide limits to the demands made upon it
g to Gavrillac on a November morning, laden with news of thepolitical storms which were then gathering over France, Philippefound in that sleepy Breton village matter to quicken his alreadylively indignation. A peasant of Gavrillac, named Mabey, had beenshot dead that morning in the woods of Meupont, across the river,by a gamekeeper of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. The unfortunatefellow had been caught in the act of taking a pheasant from a snare,and the gamekeeper had acted under explicit orders from his master.
Infuriated by an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. deVilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabeywas a vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord ofGavrillac to demand at least some measure of reparation for thewidow and the three orphans which that brutal deed had made.
But because Andre-Louis was Philippe's dearest friend - indeed, hisalmost brother - the young seminarist sought him out in the firstinstance. He found him at break
e terror, and she burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
"Charley," she shouted, "here's Eliza misbehaving again."
"I'll settle her," answered a masculine voice, and the young man dashed into the room. He had a brown horse-cloth in his hand, which he threw over the basket, making it fast with a piece of twine so as to effectually imprison its inmate, while his aunt ran across to reassure her visitors.
"It is only a rock snake," she explained.
"Oh, Bertha!" "Oh, Monica!" gasped the poor exhausted gentlewomen.
"She's hatching out some eggs. That is why we have the fire. Eliza always does better when she is warm. She is a sweet, gentle creature, but no doubt she thought that you had designs upon her eggs. I suppose that you did not touch any of them?"
"Oh, let us get away, Bertha!" cried Monica, with her thin, black-gloved hands thrown forwards in abhorrence.
"Not away, but into the next room," said Mrs. Westmacott, with the air of one whose word was law. "This way,
way of defining Beauty which grounds it in general principles,while allowing it to reach the concrete case, is set forth inthe essay on the Nature of Beauty. The following chapters aimto expand, to test, and to confirm this central theory, byshowing, partly by the aid of the aforesaid special studies,how it accounts for our pleasure in pictures, music, andliterature.
The whole field of beauty is thus brought under discussion;and therefore, though it nowhere seeks to be exhaustive intreatment, the book may fairly claim to be a more or lessconsistent and complete aesthetic theory, and hence toaddress itself to the student of aesthetics as well as to thegeneral reader. The chapter on the Nature of Beauty, indeed,will doubtless be found by the latter somewhat technical, andshould be omitted by all who definitely object to professionalphraseology. The general conclusions of the book aresufficiently stated in the less abstract papers.
Of the essays which compose the following volume, the f
n high school. Jeff confides in me; I'm an older-brother figure. The death was an accident; Jeff and his friend were launching a model rocket. But deep down, Jeff thinks it was his fault. And ever since then, he's been wanting to find a way to bring reality under control. That's what the nants are really for. Making a virtual world. Not for medicine."
"So there's no cure?" said Nektar. "I babysit Chu for the rest of my life?" Though Chu could be sweet, he could also be difficult. Hardly an hour went by without a fierce tantrum--and half the time Nektar didn't even know why. "I want my career back, Ond."
Nektar had majored in media studies at UCLA, where she and Ond met. Before marrying Ond, she'd been in a relationship with a woman, but they fought about money a lot, and she'd mistakenly imagined life with a man would be easier. When Ond moved them to San Francisco for his Nantel job, Nektar had worked for the SF symphony, helping to organize benefit banquets and cocktail parties. In the process
all the extravagant luxuries of modern civilized life, on whom the discoveries of that first day of sun and wind in the Channel must have come with the greatest surprise. They had heard the ship described as a floating hotel; but as they began to explore her they must have found that she contained resources of a perfection unattained by any hotel, and luxuries of a kind unknown in palaces. The beauties of French chateaux and of English country-houses of the great period had been dexterously combined with that supreme form of comfort which the modern English and Americans have raised to the dignity of a fine art. Such a palace as a great artist, a great epicure, a great poet and the most spoilt and pampered woman in the world might have conjured up from their imagination in an idle hour was here materialized and set, not in a fixed landscape of park and woodland, but on the dustless road of the sea, with the sunshine of an English April pouring in on every side, and the fresh salt airs of the Channel filling
el path.
"Who on earth are you?" he gasped, trembling violently.
"I am Major Brown," said that individual, who was always cool in the hour of action.
The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous fish. At last he stammered wildly, "Come down--come down here!"
"At your service," said the Major, and alighted at a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.
The old man turned his broad back and set off at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the Major. His guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy, but gorgeously appointed house, until they reached the door of the front room. Then the old man turned with a face of apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.
"For heaven's sake," he said, "don't mention jackals."
Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst of red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter.
The Major stepped into a rich, glowing room, full of red copper, and peacock
s axis would tear it into a thousand fragments.
The old Norseman also maintained that from the farthest points of land on the islands of Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, flocks of geese may be seen annually flying still farther northward, just as the sailors and explorers record in their log-books. No scientist has yet been audacious enough to attempt to explain, even to his own satisfaction, toward what lands these winged fowls are guided by their subtle instinct. However, Olaf Jansen has given us a most reasonable explanation.
The presence of the open sea in the Northland is also explained. Olaf Jansen claims that the northern aperture, intake or hole, so to speak, is about fourteen hundred miles across. In connection with this, let us read what Explorer Nansen writes, on page 288 of his book: "I have never had such a splendid sail. On to the north, steadily north, with a good wind, as fast as steam and sail can take us, an open sea mile after mile, watch after watch, through these unknown re
precious the Saviour's promise, 'If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that you shall ask, it shall be done for you of my Father which is in heaven'!"
"Yes, mother dear," assented Mrs. Leland, "and we will claim and plead it for our poor dear Laura, and for Eva, that she may be sustained under the bereavement which awaits her."
"Yes," said Dr. Conly, "and there are many of our friends who will be ready to join us in the petition. I am going now to Woodburn--the captain having telephoned me that one of the servants is ill--and we all know that he and his will be full of sympathy for Eva and her sick mother."
"No doubt they will," said Grandma Elsie, "both as Christians and as warm friends of Evelyn. And it will be quite the same with our other friends."
With that the doctor bade good-morning and took his departure in the direction of Woodburn. The family there were surprised and interested by the news he had to tell of the arrival at Fairview, and of Laura's feebl