The Awakening of the Lion.
There is an encouraging growth of musical understanding and appreciation in this country. Even now you hear very many people say, “I liked the scherzo.”
[p 272]
]“He sat down in a vacant chair,” relates a magazine fictionist. It is, everything considered, the safest way. Much of the discord in the world has been caused by gentlemen—and ladies as well—who sat down in chairs already occupied.
A Kenwood pastor has resigned because some members of his flock thought him too broad. The others, we venture, thought him too long.
“Prof. Hobbs Will Make Globe Trot”—Michigan Daily.
Giddap, old top!
[p 273]
]Vacation Travels.
It is a great pleasure to be free, for a time, from the practice of expressing opinion; free to read the newspapers with no thought of commenting on the contents; free to glance at a few hectic headlines, and then bite into a book that you have meant to get to for a long time past, to read it slowly, without skipping, to read over an especially well done page and to put the book aside and meditate on the moral which it pointed, or left you to point. Unless obliged to, why should anybody write when he can read instead? One’s own opinions (hastily formed and lacking even the graces of expression) are of small account; certainly they are of less account than Mr. Mill’s observations on Liberty, which I have put down in order to pen a few longish paragraphs. (I would rather be reading, you understand; my pen is running for the same reason some street cars run—to hold the franchise.) And speaking of Mill, do you remember the library catalogue which contained the consecutive items, “Mill on Liberty” and “Ditto on the Floss”?
One can get through a good many books on a long railway journey. My slender stock was exhausted before I reached Colorado, and I am compelled to re-read until such time as I can lay [p 274] />]in a fresh supply. At home it is difficult to find time to read—that is, considerable stretches of time, so that one may really digest the pages which he is leisurely taking in. Fifty years ago there were not many more books worth reading than there are to-day, but there was more time to assimilate them. A comparatively few books thoroughly assimilated gave us Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Not long ago my friend the Librarian was speaking of this short classic. “Did you ever,” said he, “read Edward Everett’s address at Gettysburg?” “No,” said I, “and I fear I shall never get to it.” “It is stowed away among his collected orations,” said he. “Not half bad. Unfortunately for its fame, Mr. Lincoln happened along with a few well chosen remarks which the world has preferred to remember.”