The Commonplace 29 



and no room for it. One evening I read to 

 the students Matthew Arnold's " Buried Life." 

 The next day, Jenkins came to my office, en- 

 tered hesitatingly as if requesting something 

 that he might not have, and asked whether I 

 would loan him the poem till he could learn it, 

 for he could not afford to buy. 



If sentiment is necessarily eliminated from 

 business transactions, it is all the more impor- 

 tant that it be added to the recreation and the 

 leisure. The world never needed poetry so 

 much as now. This thought is forcibly ex- 

 pressed in Charles Eliot Norton's advice, that 

 has now been so effectively used by the press : 

 " Whatever your occupation may be, and how- 

 ever crowded your hours with affairs, do not 

 fail to secure at least a few minutes every day 

 for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of 

 poetry." 



The resource of the silences. 



We need now and then to take ourselves 

 away from men and the crowd and con- 

 ventionalities, and go into the silence, for 



