ON THE NOKTH SHOKE AGAIN 



IF you have once seen a picture, says 

 Emerson somewhere, never look at it again. 

 He means that hours of insight are so rare 

 that a really high and satisfying experience 

 with a book, picture, landscape, or other ob- 

 ject of beauty is to be accepted as final, a 

 favor of Providence which we have no warrant 

 to expect repeated. If you have seen a thing, 

 therefore, really seen it and communed with 

 the soul of it, let that suffice you. Attempts 

 to live the hour over a second time will only 

 result in failure, or, worse yet, will cast a 

 shadow over what ought to have been a per- 

 manently luminous recollection. 



There is a modicum of sound philosophy 

 in the advice. We must take it as the coun- 

 sel of an idealist, and follow it or not as oc- 

 casion bids. The words of such men, as one 

 of them was given to saying, are only for 

 those who have ears to hear. We may be 



