LITERARY AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 



237 



will it ever be a mere machine. If 

 it does it will soon wear out and break 

 down and leave nothing" behind but 

 rusting and decaying" rubbish. Nature 

 will soon be rid of such trash. The 

 mind has come up through stress and 

 strife, hopes, fears, love and mysteries 

 until it now is itself the greatest of 

 mysteries ; and it still lives and grows 

 and probably will ever live and grow 

 by wonder and mystery and the ex- 

 panse of the imagination. If one 

 could make a vitalized dictionary of it, 

 it would not pay ; paper and ink are 

 far better material for encyclopaedias. 

 There may be minds like that of Grad- 

 grind that can exist for a while on the 

 dry pabulum of facts but they do not 

 help the world and the tears shed on 

 their graves would never make the 

 violets grow. 



A work that is true to nature, true 

 to life, goes straight to the heart. It 

 is its faithfulness to facts that tells — 

 not simple facts of nature alone but 

 facts of human conception of nature, 

 human thought and human feeling 

 as related to the outside world. The 

 great charm in literature is so sub- 

 tile it takes a genius to bring it out. 

 You read from one author and you 

 feel. "It's very true — Yes." You yawn 

 and your eyes look dull. You take up 

 another book. It electrifies you at 

 once. There are the same symbols 

 in black and white, but you hardly 

 know you see them for the writer has 

 in some mysterious way filled the sur- 

 rounding atmosphere with pictures — 

 no, not pictures but life. 



I remember how much I enjoyed 

 Spenser's "Fairy Queen" — before I 

 read it. I had read about it and it was 

 the beautiful world of imagination to 

 my boyhood as I took those delight- 

 ful walks in the winter woods, and the 

 fairy scenes of frost, snow, ice, trees 

 and bushes furnished a true fairyland 

 of delight. Snenser was a ooet whose 

 writing it requires a poet's mind to 

 appreciate, but, if one had the rare 

 genius to oicture these scenes as I 

 saw and felt them, the brave knights, 

 lovely ladies and the wonderful type 

 of loveliness and perfection, the Fairy 

 Queen, as they appeared to my imagi- 

 nation, I am sure it would give ex- 



quisite pleasure to the heart of an 

 imaginative boy or girl. Probably 

 there are older persons who would find 

 in it an hour of pure delight. It is 

 unfortunate that in childhood we can- 

 not express our thoughts, and often 

 when we get older we do not have 

 any worth expressing, — at least they 

 are very different. If the old thoughts 

 come again they come as a stolen 

 dream in a field of toil and we forget 

 the little feet that are paddling over 

 the same old road and looking for 

 something they cannot find. That is 

 the reason I wish never to be a child 

 again. It is inexpressibly sweet to 

 look back at some of childhood's 

 scenes ; but oh ! the pain and loneli- 

 ness of wishing something one does 

 not know how to get, and wanting to 

 understand so many things, and the 

 hoplessness of finding anything or 

 anybody to put the weary mind at 

 rest. 



The harvest fields of Minnesota and 

 Dakota are far away ; so are the mel- 

 low groves and the sweet air of au- 

 tumn. I can not take hold of the plow 

 handles and turn the long black fur- 

 rows in the golden stubble-fields while 

 I take into my being all the surround- 

 ing rural scenes and learn the little 

 dramas of the lives of the rural people. 

 I cannot take my gun and dog and 

 hunt the w r ild duck by the reedy lake 

 or the prairie chicken in the withered 

 grass or harvest field. I cannot see 

 the dog point w r ith meaning at the 

 hidden game nor can I feel the thrill 

 of excitement and delight as the bird 

 arises, whirls and sails rapidly away 

 and then falls before my gun ; but I 

 would like to read about these things 

 sometimes, not for the pleasure of 

 killing but for the thrill and charm 

 of life in the open outdoor world. 

 There may sometimes be more pleas- 

 ures in sitting by a city fireside read- 

 ing of these things than in doing them ; 

 and in our somewhat roundabout prog- 

 ress toward civilization the harmless 

 thrill of reading of these sports may 

 be a stepping-stone toward pleasures 

 as great but harmless. 



Do I alwavs find what I want to read? 



J 



No, not always. Sometimes to satisfy 

 my desires I go and try to write it 



