Making a place to live on the lake shore, the development of bluff and land, the building of study and stable and finally the stone house (a pool of water in the centre, a roof open to the sunlight, the outer walls broken with chimneys for the inner fires), these are but exterior cultivations, the establishment of a visible order that is but a symbol of the intenser activity of the natures within.
Quiet, a clean heart, a fragrant fire, a press for garments, a bin of food, a friendly neighbour, a stretch of distance from the casements—these are sane desirable matters to gather together; but the fundamental of it all is, that they correspond to a picture of the builder's ideal. There is a bleakness about buying one's house built; in fact, a man cannot really possess anything unless he has an organised receptivity—a conception of its utilities that has come from long need. A man might buy the most perfect violin, but it is nothing more than a curio to him unless he can bring out its wisdom. It is the same in mating with a woman or fathering a child.
There is a good reason why one man keeps pigs and another bees, why one man plants petunias and another roses, why the many can get along with maples when elms and beeches are to be had, why one man will exchange a roomful of man-fired porcelain for one bowl of sunlit alabaster. No chance anywhere. We call unto ourselves that which corresponds to our own key and tempo; and so long as we live, there is a continual re-adjustment without, the more unerringly to meet the order within.
The stone house is finished, roses have bloomed, but the story of the cultivation of the human spirits is really just beginning—a work so joyous and productive that I would take any pains to set forth with clearness the effort to develop each intrinsic gift, to establish a deep breathing of each mind—a fulness of expression on the one hand, and a selfless receptivity on the other. We can only breathe deeply when we are at peace. This is true mentally as well as physically, and soulfully, so far as one can see. The human fabric is at peace only when its faculties are held in rhythm by the task designed for them. Expression of to-day makes the mind ready for the inspiration of to-morrow.
It may be well finally to make it clear that there is no personal ambition here to become identified with education in the accepted sense. Those who come bring nothing in their hands, and answer no call save that which they are sensitive enough to hear without words. Hearing that, they belong, indeed. Authorship is the work of Stonestudy, and shall always be; but first and last is the conviction that literature and art are but incident to life; that we are here to become masters of life—artists, if possible, but in any case, men.
... To-day the glimpse of it all—that this is to be a book of the younger generation.... I remember in the zeal of a novice, how earnestly I planned to relate the joys of rose-culture, when some yellow teas came into their lovely being in answer to the long preparation. It seemed to me that a man could do little better for his quiet joy than to raise roses; that nothing was so perfectly designed to keep romance perennial in his soul. Then the truth appeared—greater things that were going on here—the cultivation of young and living minds, minds still fluid, eager to give their faith and take the story of life; minds that are changed in an instant and lifted for all time, if the story is well told.... So in the glimpse of this book as a whole, as it comes to-day (an East wind rising and the gulls blown inland) I find that a man may build a more substantial thing than a stone house, may realise an intenser cultivation than even tea-roses require; and of this I want to tell simply and with something of order from the beginning.
Will Levington Comfort.
Stonestudy, March, 1916.