than a witling's jest.
Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,
They read with joy, then shut the book."

Legs vs. Architects

I don't know how many persons who hate climbing there are in the world;
there must be, by and large, a great number. I'm one, I know that. But
whenever a building is erected for the use of the public, the
convenience of a non-climbing person is wholly ignored.

I refer, of course, to the debonair habit which architects have of never
designing an entrance that is easy to enter. Instead of leaving the
entrance on the street level so that a man can walk in, they perch it on
a flight of steps, so that no one can get in without climbing.

The architect's defense is, it looks better. Looks better to whom? To
architects, and possibly to tourists who never go in the building. It
doesn't look better to the old or the lame, I can tell you; nor to
people who are tired and have enough to do without climbing steps.

There are eminent scholars in universities, whose strength is taxed
daily, because they must daily climb a parapet to get to their studies.

Everywhere there are thousands of men and women who must work for a
living where some nonchalant architect has needlessly made their work
harder.

I admit there is a dignity and beauty in a long flight of steps. Let
them be used, then, around statues and monuments, where we don't have to
mount them. But why put them where they add, every day, to the exertions
of every one, and bar out some of the public completely? That's a
hard-hearted beauty.

Suppose that, in the eye of an architect, it made buildings more
beautiful to erect them on poles, as the lake dwellers did, ages back.
(It would be only a little more obsolete than putting them on top of
high steps.) Would the public meekly submit to this standard and shinny
up poles all their lives?

Let us take the situation of a citizen who is not a mountaineering
enthusiast. He can command every modern convenience in most of his ways.
But if he happens to need a book in the Public Library what does he
find? He finds that some architect has built the thing like a Greek
temple. It is mounted on a long flight of steps, because the Greeks were
all athletes. He tries the nearest university library. It has a flight
that's still longer. He says to himself (at least I do), "Very well,
then, I'll buy the dam