THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 61 



iWe foolishly educate ourselves away from it 

 and cultivate the prosaic and subdued, and so 

 play the fool. Now we teach young people to 

 cultivate the emotional and harness it to serv- 

 ice later on. Little things thrill me now as a 

 score of years ago. Singular experiences, 

 charming episodes in the novel, striking coinci- 

 dences in history and oft I pencil them on book 

 margins, or on scraps of paper for pigeon 

 holes. 



The old pasture of forty acres had endless 

 possibilities for interesting and teaching me. 

 Its trees and shrubs and hills and woods and 

 brooks. It was an enchanted land, a minia- 

 ture cosmos or chaos as suited the fancy. 

 Imagination had ample scope for flights and 

 flew, and every sense felt and thrilled. Never; 

 was there such a brook, never such clear and 

 limpid water that giggled its joys so gleefully, 

 or sung its all-day-long anthems so musically, 

 such endless variety of flowers along its banks, 

 violets, blue flags and honeysuckles, buttercups 

 and daisies, cowslips and steeple tops, willows 

 and tag-alders and catkins; minnows so beauti- 

 ful and swift, frogs and crickets — everything. 

 There was beauty in it all and all was beauti- 

 ful. I felt it and that was enough. I know 

 now the moral value of emotional and aesthetic 



