e allowed his small wife to beat him: "It pleases her and it don't
hurt I."

This struggle for recognition as a great nation, to be received on
equal terms by the rest of us, has upset the nerves of certain classes
in Germany, and among them the untravelled and small-town-dwelling
professor.

I am a craftsman in letters myself, in a small way, but I am no
believer that books are the only key to life, or the only way to find
a solution for its riddles and problems. Life is language, and books
only the dictionaries; men are the text, books only the commentaries.
Books are only good as a filter for actual experiences. A man must
have a rich and varied experience of men and women before he can use
books to advantage. Life is varied, men and women many, while the
individual life is short; wise men read books, therefore, to enrich
their experience, not merely as the pedant does, to garner facts.
"J'etudie les livres en attendant que J'etudie les hommes," writes
Voltaire. "Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a
mighty bloodless substitute for life," writes Stevenson.

Montgolfier sees a woman's skirt drying and notices that the hot air
fills it and lifts it, and this gives him the idea for a balloon.

Denis Papin sees the cover lifted from a pot by the steam, and there
follow the myriad inventions in which steam is the driving power.

Newton, dozing under an apple-tree, is hit on the head by a falling
apple, and there follows the law of gravitation.

Franklin flies a kite, and a shock of electricity starts him upon the
road to his discoveries.

Archimedes in his bath notices that his body seems to grow lighter,
and there follows the great law which bears his name.

These are the foundation-stones upon which the whole house of science
is built, and no one of them was dug out of a book. Charlemagne could
not read, and Napoleon, when he left school for Paris, carried the
recommendation from his master that he might possibly become a fair
officer of marines, but nothing more! A capital example of the ability
of the man of books to measure the abilities of the man of the world.

Reading and writing are modern accomplishments, and we grossly
exaggerate their importance as man-makers. That, it has always been my
contention, is the fatal fallacy of modern education, and you may see
it carried to its extreme in Germany, for men who have not lived
broadly are merely hampered by books. It is as though one studie