Impressions 



A cobweb can deflect our course as surely as 

 rocks turn aside the current of a brook. 



Not all gossamer is spider-web. We love the 

 flimsy so well that we readily take to dainty 

 nothingness and half our lives dally with un- 

 restrained thought, the gossamer of idleness, 

 that weaves a chain about us which we could 

 break if we would, but never do. We hold, 

 whether logically or not, that the gossamer of 

 our own begetting deserves better treatment. 

 We nurse it carefully, we humor its whims, we 

 become its willing slave, and all the while the 

 world is waiting for us to do our proper work. 

 What an immense showing would it make if we 

 did half we might do. Instead, the world too* 

 often has reason to wonder why we ever were, 

 so trivial the impression made by us. A good 

 epitaph for many a head-stone : l ' Enslaved by 

 gossamer/' 



If it be true that "he is a freeman whom the 

 truth makes free," then the naturalist is fortu- 

 nate in escaping from bondage, for the cobwebs 

 that are everywhere have a significance of their 

 own that it behooves us to consider. Nature 

 meets with no accidents and leaves nothing ly- 



37 



