Why is it that if a young man has not certain points of distinction in the way he combs his hair, wears his collar, or affects the English gentleman, some of the girls hesitate about receiving his attentions?
If they do finally accept his kindness, they feel obliged to excuse his commonplace appearance, and exclaim to their friends apologetically, "But, then, he is really good at heart, you know, and very agreeable!" Oh, pride is a valuable characteristic sometimes, but is one of the worst of evils when it tries to despise the ordinary.
Do you not think we should all be happier, girls, if we took more time to appreciate the commonplace? I have observed in the lives of great naturalists, that not only the stone which all other builders had rejected became the head of the corner in their temple of knowledge, but that the most patient observation of simplest things was the material out of which the edifice was made. Thoreau wanted to account for the fact that when a pine grove is cut down an oak forest often grows up; so he went, each year, to visit a pine lot in Concord. In his earliest observations he could see nothing except pines; but, burrowing around in the leaf-mould, he found, at last, tiny oaks an inch or two high. Year after year he visited the grove; still he could observe no special growth of the oaks. Finally the grove was cut down. Up sprang the tiny oaks, and flourished in the light and sunshine now freely admitted to them. Thick and tall, they grew into a very forest, and the pines had never a chance to rise up and crowd them out. Do you think the naturalist's search stopped then? Oh, no! He next found out how the tiny oaks came among the pines; he inquired into the habits of squirrels as planters, into the character of winds and birds as farmers and bundle-boys; and was at length able to account for the succession of our forest trees.
The commonplace will never advance to meet us; but have faith in its intrinsic merit, look for beauty, and you will find it. Could you predict that from the plants lying in the stagnant pool such a perfect flower as a lily would spring? If you were passing a low, thatched cottage made of rough stone, its only pretence being a coat of whitewash, would you guess it held a poet? And, if you were riding along in a horse-car, interested only in the foreign-looking faces and the remarkable clothes, would you be likely to know that a great philanthropist sat beside you? No, not unless you had learned to observe more wisely than most girls; and not unless you had found out the noble worth of certain ordinary men and women whose faces are not pictured in books, nor raised on medallions.
How cautious we ought to be in forming our judgments! Have you never made the mistake of replying carelessly to one whom you thought was stupid, but whom you discovered to be a person of marked ability? The older we grow, the more we are amazed at our lack of good sense in framing an opinion of those whom we meet. We are so frequently surprised at what persons do or become, we feel we can never be sure that any one is common, or of the every-day sort. We almost believe Novalis speaks the truth when he says, "We touch Heaven when we touch a human body." Let us remember then, girls, not to trust our first impressions. In forming our judgments let us be very sure our knowledge is sufficient to tell which are the sheep and which are the goats, before we begin to separate them.
Just once more let me insist on the necessity of training the observation for enjoyment of the commonplace. We call things stupid, dronish, monotonous, because our faculties are not sufficiently exercised to see any other qualities in them. Do you not suppose an artist sees more in a birch swamp than we do? Is not even he likelier to be successful in painting new wonders in the commonplace than in trying to show objects we seldom see?
Have you never noticed Albrecht Durer's drawing of Praying Hands? Look at a photograph of it, please. Is it not wonderful? We cannot describe all the feeling those hands suggest. If you had passed them on the street, you would not have noticed them, unless to remark that they were grimy, perhaps, or lean. The great German artist saw them folded in prayer, and heard all the language of a despairing soul as it came out in the expression of those hands,—wonderful hands, "instinct with spirit." Look at them again, girls.
We talked about commonplace duties when we spoke of work. Let me repeat here that life is made up of commonplace deeds. We do not have great national disturbances every day; and the surest proof that we have greater need of common events rather than startling ones, ordinary duties rather than extraordinary, is, that the moment we scorn an ordinary occurrence, or omit a daily duty, we find ourselves and every one else miserable, for a while, at least. We are stopping a part of the machinery necessary to human happiness. Let us not despise the lowliest duties. George Macdonald, the writer who has given strength to the souls of so many people, was contented to write, "If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God."
Do you begin to think, girls, I would have you always prosaic, plodding, self-satisfied, unambitious? Oh, no! do not understand me so. Why, I believe that even dreaming about doing, and seeing, and having things is sometimes very helpful, and not at all inconsistent with the commonplace. It is almost necessary for some people to build air-castles. They get more real pleasure in them than they would from real castles on the Rhine, the Danube, or along the rivers of sunny France. Have you never read Curtis's "Prue and I"?
Ah, how beautiful it is to be dreaming about a future, though it may never come true!—to be floating on the sunset tide of Venice; to be journeying over the passes of the Alps in summer, and always approaching Mount Blanc; to be resting by the fountain in Alhambra's Court of Lions; to be gazing at the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, or at the Ascension in the Vatican; to be dosing in an orange grove in southern California; to be awed by the deep canons of the Colorado, or to be filled with the sublimity of the Yosemite!