sampler. Often some neighbor came bringing her work, for nobody could be
idle for a moment. I do not know what they talked about, but I can
guess. However the picture is faithful and attractive, though for us,
silent now. I find as few representatives of the ideal common people as
of the nobility or of genius. So let them remain a picture, and do not
ask for their conversation, neither for their grammar nor
pronunciation. Cannot a Dorian speak Doric? Kindly and helpful
neighbors can live together without the correctness and elegancies of
either. To me it is hateful to see them caricatured and made literary
merchandise. Not so were the classic idyls and pastorals of Theocritus,
Virgil, Spenser and Saint Pierre composed. Is there nothing but bad
grammar, mispronunciation and provincialisms in the heart of the
rustic? Must he be forever misrepresented by his speech that he may be
saved by his virtues? The closer a picture is drawn to the outward
circumstance the more transient it will be. Ideals alone survive in art
and literature. I should like to have the Theban law reenacted, which
required the imitation in art of the beautiful and forbade the
representation of the deformed and grotesque.

Four summers had passed before I knew of any world beyond the walls of
the Red House, the dooryard and the shade of the elm tree. I did not
feel their confinement. There seemed to be boundless liberty, and the
delusion is complete when there is no sense of limitation. The goldfish
in his glass prison no doubt supposes himself swimming in an infinite
sea. When the boy's growth can be still measured by his mother's
yardstick his outlook is restricted correspondingly. He climbs upon a
chair with difficulty and cannot see over the table. This being, so
lately from heaven, creeps upon the earth, and his first experiences are
with the feet and under side of things. Ask the creeper how the human
face, a room and its furniture appear to him. My father's face as I
looked up to him seemed to be very narrow and a yard long. A face there
was not. Nor had my mother's round table any top; but its two crossbars
beneath, screws and catch and three feet belonged to my under world. I
could explore the floor from corner to corner; the mantel-shelf, windows
and ceiling were worlds and worlds above me. Lifted on some one's
shoulder I touched the ceiling with my finger and knew no greater joy
nor anything more wonderful.

At length the creeper raises hi