e man who cannot
interpret life as it shows itself in hill, in valley, in stream and rock
and tree, goes through life with bandaged eyes, and that condition
affords no freedom.

=Street signs.=--A man who had been traveling through Europe for several
weeks, and had finally reached London, wrote enthusiastically of his
pleasure at being able to read the street signs. All summer he had felt
restricted and hampered, but when he reached a country where the street
signs were intelligible, he gained his freedom. Had he been as familiar
with Italian, German, and French as he is with English, life would have
been for him far more nearly complete during that summer and therefore
much more agreeable and fertile. There is no more exhilarating
experience than to be able to read the street signs along the highway of
life, and this ability is one of the great objectives of every vitalized
school.

=Trained minds.=--Nature reveals her inmost secrets only to the trained
mind. No power can force her, no wealth can bribe her, to disclose these
secrets to others. Only the mind that is trained can gain admission to
her treasure house to revel in its glories. John Burroughs lives in a
world that the ignorant man cannot know. The trained mind alone has the
key that will unlock libraries, art galleries, the treasure houses of
science, language, history, and art. The untrained minds must stand
outside and win what comfort they can from their wealth, their social
status, or whatever else they would fain substitute for the training
that would admit them. All these things are parts of life, and those who
cannot gain admission to these conservatories of knowledge cannot know
life in its completeness.

=Achievements of trained minds.=--In order to know life in the large,
the mind must be able to leap from the multiplication table to the
stars; must become intimate with the movements of the tides, the
glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the
eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the
zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the
chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve
into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the
heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must
be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to
the latest proclamation; and must sit in the councils o