ourishment.

Mistakes are often made and ourselves or others kept an unnecessary
length of time in mental suffering because we fail to attribute a
morbid mental state to its physical cause. We blame ourselves or
others for behavior that we call wicked or silly, and increase the
suffering, when all that is required is a little thoughtful care of
the body to cause the silly wickedness to disappear entirely.

We are supposed to be indulging in sickly sentiment when we are
really suffering from sickly nerves. An open sympathy will detect
this mistake very soon, and save intense suffering by an early
remedy.

Sentiment is as strengthening as sentimentality is weakening. It is
as strong, as clear, and as fine in flavor as the other is sickly
sweet. No one who has tasted the wholesome vigor of the one could
ever care again for the weakening sweetness of the other, however
much he might have to suffer in getting rid of it. True sentiment
seeks us; we do not seek it. It not only seeks us, it possesses us,
and runs in our blood like the new life which comes from fresh air
on top of a mountain. With that true sentiment we can feel a desire
to know better things and to live them. We can feel a hearty love
for others; and a love that is, in its essence, the strongest of all
human loves. We can give and receive a healthy sympathy which we
could never have known otherwise. We can enjoy talking about
ourselves and about "being good," because every word we say will be
spontaneous and direct, with more thought of law than of self. This
true sentiment seeks and finds us as we recognize the sham and shake
it off, and as we refuse to dwell upon our actions and thoughts in
the past or to look back at all except when it is a necessity to
gain a better result.

We are like Orpheus, and true sentiment is our Eurydice with her
touch on our shoulder; the spirits that follow are the
sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of
our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let
us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right
through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know
sentimentality only as a name.

XIV.

PROBLEMS.

THERE are very few persons who have not I had the experience of
giving up a problem in mathematics late in the evening, and waking
in the morning with the solution clear in their minds. That has been
the experience of many, too, in real-life