t among lusty men,--the bristly,
pachydermatous fellows that hew out the highways for the material
progress of society, and the broad-shouldered, out-of-door men that
fight for the great prizes of life,--you will come to think that the
spun-sugar business is the chief end of man, and begin to feel and
look as if you believed yourself as much above common people as that
personage of whom Tourgueneff says that "he had the air of his own
statue erected by national subscription."

--The Master paused and fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does
sometimes. He had had his own say, it is true, but he had established
his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too,
was conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity.

--I am always troubled when I think of my very limited mathematical
capacities. It seems as if every well-organized mind should be able to
handle numbers and quantities through their symbols to an indefinite
extent; and yet, I am puzzled by what seems to a clever boy with a turn
for calculation as plain as counting his fingers. I don't think any
man feels well grounded in knowledge unless he has a good basis of
mathematical certainties, and knows how to deal with them and apply them
to every branch of knowledge where they can come in to advantage.

Our Young Astronomer is known for his mathematical ability, and I asked
him what he thought was the difficulty in the minds that are weak in
that particular direction, while they may be of remarkable force in
other provinces of thought, as is notoriously the case with some men of
great distinction in science.

The young man smiled and wrote a few letters and symbols on a piece of
paper.--Can you see through that at once?--he said.

I puzzled over it for some minutes and gave it up.

--He said, as I returned it to him, You have heard military men say that
such a person had an eye for country, have n't you? One man will note
all the landmarks, keep the points of compass in his head, observe how
the streams run, in short, carry a map in his brain of any region that
he has marched or galloped through. Another man takes no note of any of
these things; always follows somebody else's lead when he can, and gets
lost if he is left to himself; a mere owl in daylight. Just so some men
have an eye for an equation, and would read at sight the one that
you puzzled over. It is told of Sir Isaac Newton that he required no
demonstration of the proposi