The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-08-26

cession. Treat him gently, o winds, and
enter softly into him, o sunshine, and
all you myriad messengers OF the air
breathe your inarticulate secrets II
him.
Such. indeed. was the compensation
softly 10 glimmer like star-points in my
exile as the months slipped by. And
what was the secret? Dull mortal that
am, it was told me in effuence, but not
till long afterward did 1 find it writer
on the deep pages Of my experience, like
the embroidery of God in the Milky Way
and in the marsh. I have tried many
times since TO get that secret into words
but words are so brittle that they break
down helplessly with the weight of a
truth that is like an atmosphere There
are some secrets, like the ether, for
which words have not been invented.
One day when thought I had caught
the feat Of fitting the ether TO syIlables ]
wrote down, Before freedom can be,
obedience is 1t had all the ethereal
disadvantages Of an abstraction trying
to perform a concrete trick. How barren
the proposition was beside the Psalm
that had sung itself into my comprehen-
sion through all those months. How far
afay fro mthe eneffable elouuence which
had said without words, Behold, all
things but man are under law and man
must come voluntarily under it before he
can become part Of the scheme. To
him alone it IS allowed to return. So do
we live and obey and die that ne may
learn the lesson
TTnoY n yTar,e ,1ara c;+v r. o,,,;+ ,-fou,
worm ray of his own viii depend the
darkness Of his cell and the limitations
Of it. There are men and women who
have SO perverted their natures that
they live entirely through their super
ficies, and that kind of life which furn-
ishes continual external stimulation con-
verts them in time to hollow resound-
ing shells, silent, indeed unless they are
beat upon. We all know men the great
er part of whose lives are spent looking
at the procession They would be Of
about as much good to themselves In a
dark room as would be a mirror. They
are decrepit infants who must be fed
continually by the spoon of circumstance.
Whenever things lose their motion they,
too, lose theirs, as if they were mere cogs
in the social machinery. Their expert
ence is about as interesting as a book
Of old playbills. That was what Goethe
meant when he said the ordinary man
is content to see something going on.
He is content because he does not have
to go on himself.
Probably conscience has great deal
to do with a mans Discrimination to be
left alone with himself When one has
nobody but himself he is apt to be not
only bored. but frightened. Ones mis-
takes and follies always look more for
midable when one is alone. Conscience is
ike a photographer-it shuts of the gen
eral glare, gets the light focused and
subdued, and out comes the expression,
that belongs to you. I confess that I at
first acted like the ordinary man Chat
am). I hankered. pinned. growled, COM
planned, and I looked over my shoulder at
the disturbance that I missed 1 was so
dreadfully bored because nothing was go
ing on. And mind you the immeasurable
procession of the universe was jogging
right along as before. Not cog had
been slipped in the tremendous plan,
but I felt that It had because 7 was no
longer on exhibition. There is a Chinese
adage which says that our hopes are our