Nature s Music, Art, and Industry 69 



or disturb, nor grate upon the nerves. It is not 

 work or weariness that breaks down and prostrates, 

 it is noise, the assaults of discordance; continued 

 and unrelieved it kills. The physician must guard 

 his patient from it if he would save his life. 

 Women, with their more delicate sensibilities, fur- 

 nish the most victims. Their own unrestrained 

 children may bring them to an early grave, or if 

 they survive, so toughen and harden their fine fiber 

 as to make them termagants. Thunder will sour 

 sweet cream. The filing of a saw tends to make a 

 demoniac. We submit to the storm of noises in a 

 city because we cannot help ourselves, as we do 

 when caught out in a storm of rain or hail, but 

 when we retire it is as if the sun were shining plac- 

 idly once more. 



Purity is Nature's most marked characteristic. 

 She is a tidy housekeeper with an antipathy for dirt. 

 She is not afraid to wash her ceilings with rains and 

 her carpets with dews, for her colors do not run. 

 She would be regarded as extravagant were she not 

 so rich, for she refits her house from dome to cellar 

 at least three times each year, and she does it so 

 quietly that nobody tries to get away. She likes 

 to begin with tender pea-greens, changes to dark 

 or olive greens, clears out everything, and breaks 

 out in gorgeous colors. The festivity over, she 

 takes to white and crystal. Nature, in special 

 cases, makes much litter in her work, but she always 

 sweeps it away when her task is accomplished. If 



