THE HEART OF HULL-HOUSE

DO you remember what the poet says of Peter Bell?

At noon, when by the forest's edge

He lay beneath the branches high,

The soft blue sky did never melt

Into his heart: he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky!

In the same way, when he saw the "primrose by the river's brim," it was not to him a lovely bit of the miracle of upspringing life from the unthinking clod; it was just a common little yellow flower, which one might idly pick and cast aside, but to which one never gave a thought. He saw the sky and woods and fields and human faces with the outward eye, but not with the eye of the heart or the spirit. He had eyes for nothing but the shell and show of things.