e rumble of a mill
The silence intent of men at work
The talk of men going to their homes,--
These are all the notes of great symphonies.

Nor should I stop with the industries of commerce and manufacture. There
are many possibilities in the sounds and voices that are known of
fisherfolk and campers and foresters and farmers. Somehow we should be
able to individualize these voices and to give them an artistic
expression in some kind of human composition. There are rich suggestions
in the voices of the farmyard, the calls of wild creatures, the tones of
farm implements and machinery, the sounds of the elements, and
particularly in the relations of all these to the pauses, the silences,
and the distances beyond.

Whether it is possible to utilize any of these tones and voices
artistically is not for a layman to say; but the layman may express the
need that he feels.

_The threatened literature_

A fear seems to be abroad that the inquisitiveness and exactness of
science will deprive literature of imagination and sympathy and will
destroy artistic expression; and it is said that we are in danger of
losing the devotional element in literature. If these apprehensions are
well founded, then do we have cause for alarm, seeing that literature is
an immeasurable resource.

Great literature may be relatively independent of time and place, and
this is beyond discussion here; but if the standards of interpretative
literature are lowering it must be because the standards of life are
lowering, for the attainment and the outlook of a people are bound to be
displayed in its letters.

Perhaps our difficulty lies in a change in methods and standards rather
than in essential qualities. We constantly acquire new material for
literary use. The riches of life are vaster and deeper than ever before.
It would be strange indeed if the new experience of the planet did not
express itself in new literary form.

We are led astray by the fatal habit of making comparisons, contrasting
one epoch with another. There may be inflexible souls among the
investigators who see little or nothing beyond the set of facts in a
little field, but surely the greater number of scientific men are
persons of keen imagination and of broad interest in all conquests.
Indeed, a lively imagination is indispensable in persons of the best
attainments in science; it is necessary only that the imagination be
regulated and trained. Neve