The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-23

they say and presently launch themselves into some cunning, curiously woven argu- ment-hopelessly abstract-with their own pens defeating the scheme they plead for
 The profound ethics of Maeterlink we may take as an example of thought in the abstract the nature of which mil itates in no small degre against simp1ic4 ity. Not even Emerson has struck deeper chords of consciousness or shaped more delicate fragments of thought, yet there ever turks through his lines that evasive style which for a long while must keep him from the applause of the laity. It may be argued that as the childs first crude impressions gradually give place to the crowding experiences of developed manhood, so must the word worker evolve the simple needs of yesterday must give place to the mighty throng of emotions, which to be put in black and white must needs be either gaudily dressed else doomed to be shadow people-either with an overplus of words or with dim mean ings we may not quite know and make a part of us.
 Those mighty voices sounding through history disprove this. Those august poems and essays out of the past, yet altogether woven with the present, were not word- weighted or filled with mystic leadings No half-shadowed means there-na I conundrums No special set of freak hunt ing literary folk waiting for first edi- tions in those days when lteratures first dawn began; no fickle folk glimpsing through one of the masters' books, won dering if the author meant truth or make believe. They were coherent and simple as the thought allowed, and there was no more need to inaugurate a Plato Society of Athens" to get the truth about Socrates and Crito, than there was e.. 4ot., .I,, ,1o. the teacher spoke truth or not. That the noble simplicity of the latter burned it. self into the minds of his pupils at Me- opolis, witness the records of Arrian.
 A developed lover of the beautiful-one who has passed the bright threshold-is glad for obscure hints, for suggestions of the final promises, for graceful lines which elude. From his point of vantage the highest seems to be the half-expressed the noblest, the not-to-be-told But is there no statelier prospect halfway re- moved from his bright place and the meadow lands? Surely the highest truths known to men can be brought best to us in their own bright garments-not fetched in disguise, stealthfly, as though their creator were half afraid of his beautiful findings, praising the wonders of life in uncertain words, till by and by we are in the mesh of things and wonder if we have not quite missed the fair truth we hoped for. Tn truth we have gone far astray-have grown to love more the aisles and vistas than the beautiful dwellers there.
 We should be glad for beauty in any form, nor should its lessons ever be dis praised Even where mighty idea loses half it's intent in a rose garden of words one can almost feel that the gain in beauty is almost proportionate to the sense lost. Only, it behooves us to keep close watch on ourselves else we will presently be not truth seekers. but beauty seekers. surface people, lotus-s -souled. Let us consider the needs of the untaught the thousands of men and women plastic natured greedy for learning. who wait today. and shall forever greet and be glad for when they come. the clear, simple accents that all may understand.