r half an hour
and be the wiser for it. But people you talk with every day have got
to have feeders for their minds, as much as the stream that turns
a millwheel has. It isn't one little rill that's going to keep the
float-boards turning round. Take a dozen of the brightest men you can
find in the brightest city, wherever that may be,--perhaps you and I
think we know,--and let 'em come together once a month, and you'll find
out in the course of a year or two the ones that have feeders from all
the hillsides. Your common talkers, that exchange the gossip of the day,
have no wheel in particular to turn, and the wash of the rain as it runs
down the street is enough for them.

--Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his
mind,--his feeders, as you call them?

-I don't go quite so far as that,--the Master said.--I've seen men
whose minds were always overflowing, and yet they did n't read much nor
go much into the world. Sometimes you'll find a bit of a pond-hole in a
pasture, and you'll plunge your walking-stick into it and think you
are going to touch bottom. But you find you are mistaken. Some of these
little stagnant pond-holes are a good deal deeper than you think; you
may tie a stone to a bed-cord and not get soundings in some of 'em. The
country boys will tell you they have no bottom, but that only means that
they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupid-seeming
people are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual
walking-stick, I can tell you. There are hidden springs that keep the
little pond-holes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up. You
poets ought to know that.

--I can't help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists
than I thought at first, by the way you seemed to look at our dried-up
neighbor and his small pursuits.

--I don't like the word tolerant,--the Master said.--As long as
the Lord can tolerate me I think I can stand my fellow-creatures.
Philosophically, I love 'em all; empirically, I don't think I am very
fond of all of 'em. It depends on how you look at a man or a woman. Come
here, Youngster, will you? he said to That Boy.

The Boy was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection,
and was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the
Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt
himself drawn in that direction.

Read that,--said the Master.

U-n-i-ni United States of