228 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



Before the day of schools and colleges there 

 were unlearned men who knew a vast deal, after 

 their own fashion ; and this is equally true of 

 to-day. The world has waited for wireless 

 telegraphy and the electric motor, but it did not 

 need to. The north pole is no longer a mys- 

 tery, but many have lived who were ignorant of 

 all this, yet spoke words of wisdom. The ice 

 of the mill-pond whispers the essentials of a 

 frozen ocean. Many have walked boldly to a 

 fact and by unschooled cunning captured it. 

 Now, the bicycle carries us across the continent, 

 but the only gathered fact is that we are trans- 

 ported. Eyes and ears are no longer the open 

 avenues to the brain. Life is more a matter 

 now of heels than of head. 



The man who has spent a long life in the 

 country, with his fields bounded by woodland 

 and swamp, though he can neither read nor 

 write, is not necessarily ignorant. Nature has 

 made so much of her working plain to his un- 

 tutored mind that he can interpret in a way of 

 his own, and a way, too, that is not bewildering 

 by reason of a long array of contradictory state- 

 ments. It is something to have knowledge all 



